


here in your arms

by kaspbrak_kid



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Healing, Getting Together, Kid Fic, M/M, Making Out, Mild Blood, Mutual Pining, Pregnancy and Childbirth, Slow Burn, Therapy, a lil internalized homophobia, discussion of anxiety and mental health, if you've ever wanted to see richie holding a tiny baby in his huge hands, mild panic attacks, this is the fic for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-02-24 01:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 82,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23101573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaspbrak_kid/pseuds/kaspbrak_kid
Summary: Richie had no idea what to expect when Stan and Patty asked him to be their daughter's godfather, but it definitely wasn't becoming the part-time dad to a newborn.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 1257
Kudos: 1250





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I've never actually been in the hospital, especially not to have a baby, so if you notice anything that seems unrealistic or just plain wrong, do not mention it to me. What's done is done. 
> 
> Shoutout to SAM who developed this idea with me, screamed about it with me for the past week, and drew this [INCREDIBLE ART FOR IT! ](https://twitter.com/THED0GARTS/status/1237494232191045634)

When Stan and Patty ask Richie to be the godfather of their baby when Patty first announces her pregnancy—a completely honorary title, because Stan and Patty are still Jewish and Richie sure as hell isn't about to be a baby's religious mentor—Richie doesn't really know what to expect. All he knows is that it's less terrifying than "legal guardian," which was the other option offered to him, even if he knows it's still the technical one. What he assumes it means is that he’ll be morally obligated to attend every single birthday party and bat mitzvah and other boring event held in her highness’s honour, and in return Richie will be the favourite uncle by law. He’s flattered and honoured, of course, and he says yes, _of course,_ but he kind of just figures they ask him because he lives closeby and isn’t likely to have kids of his own to worry about ever in the future. And he makes a lot of money, so he’ll give her big monetary gifts that will go straight into her college fund. Which is all very true. 

As it turns out, what being godfather actually means is that when Stan has to leave town for some kind of work training conference, Richie is the person he asks to check on Patty, because she’s thirty-eight weeks pregnant and isn’t supposed to be doing any hard labour. As if Richie wouldn’t have done it anyway. 

“What a worrier,” Patty laughs, as Richie watches her chop cauliflower at the counter. “Just because I’m huge and my feet are swollen doesn’t mean I’m incapable of feeding myself.”

“I dunno, Pat, that knife looks pretty heavy. You sure you should be carrying that?”

Patty snorts. “Insinuate that I can’t handle myself one more time and you’ll _see_ what I can do with this knife.”

Richie grins, and watches her with his chin in his hands. “I do feel a little bit like a monster, just watching a pregnant lady make food for me.”

“Good. But I still won’t let you ruin my dinner. I’ll be eating freezer meals for the next month, I’m not ready to start yet.”

“Stan the Man isn’t a master chef? Shocking.” Richie chews on a baby carrot idly. “Well, tell me some fun baby facts that you’ve been reading in those baby books, so that if anyone asks what qualifications I have for being a godfather, I can wow them with my expertise.”

Patty hums, breaking down her head of cauliflower like a pro. “Did you know skin-to-skin contact with the baby after birth regulates baby’s heart rate? And it also regulates body temperature, and blood sugar, and all that. Just by letting the baby lay on your chest.”

“That sounds fake. _Blood sugar?”_ Richie points at her doubtfully with another carrot. 

“No, it’s true! They’ve done studies.”

Richie frowns. “Didn’t that one couple on the internet get charged like $40 just to hold their baby after it was born?”

Patty rolls her eyes. “Sounds about right. But it’d be worth it, honestly. From what I hear. It really helps the baby to be held as much as possible after birth. They even try to let moms hold really premature babies because it’s more effective than incubators.”

“Huh.” Richie rubs his chin thoughtfully. “You think godfather-goddaughter contact is also good?”

Patty laughs, putting down her knife and supporting her back with both hands with a wince. “I think so, yeah. They let your partner do it if mom can’t, so godfather is probably next best after that.”

“That’s what I figured.” Richie watches her carefully, automatically, as she makes a pained face and lean against the counter. “You okay?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing.” Patty sighs. “Being pregnant is rough, Richie, I don’t recommend it at all.”

Richie snorts. “I don’t think I’m at _too_ high of a risk, but thank you.”

Patty hums, rubs a hand over her extended belly. She frowns again. “Is it really hot in here?”

“No?” Richie swallows down a thick sense of dread in his throat. “Pat?”

“I’m fine,” Patty says, and waves him away. She blinks hard. 

Richie stands up. “Are you sure? You look kinda—”

“Don’t be such a Stan,” Patty says, rolling her eyes, and then her throat bobs and her face goes very white and she wobbles. 

Richie has no recollection of crossing the space between the kitchen table and the counter, but in the next second he’s there, holding Patty up under her arms, heart pounding against his ribs. “Patty?!”

Her breath comes fast and a little shallow. “Okay,” she says, voice thin. “Maybe we should go.”

“Go _where?”_ Richie asks, vision swimming in his panic. 

Patty laughs, soft and breathless. “To the hospital, Richie.”

Richie swallows thickly. “Right. _Fuck._ I have to call Stan.”

Patty flaps a hand at her face weakly, smiling, still being held up by Richie’s grip alone. “After, Richie. After we’re on the way to the hospital.”

Right. Shit. The hospital. They need to go to the fucking _hospital._ The baby, and—and Patty, and. The baby is coming. 

“Patty, is the baby coming?”

“I don’t know,” she says, voice growing fainter. “I’m going to need you to take care of it, honey.”

Richie swallows hard, and nods. “Of course,” he says, breaths coming harsh and heavy. “Yeah, Pat, of course. Anything.”

He didn’t know this was part of being a godfather.

***

Childbirth is hell. It is _hell._

Richie has no idea what the fuck he’s doing, but he’s doing it anyway. He’s calling 911, following their instructions, waiting for an ambulance, riding to the hospital with her. He’s calling Stan, letting him know what’s happening, holding Patty’s hand even though she’s out cold and telling her that Stan is on his way, he’s going to be a couple hours but everything is going to be fine. He’s standing next to her bed when she wakes up, he’s listening to doctors chatter urgently about what might need to happen, he’s watching them take her blood pressure and making concerned noises and he’s holding her hand and telling her, again, that everything is going to be okay. 

“Are you the father?” someone asks him brusquely. 

“No,” Richie says, feeling lost and overwhelmed and terrified. 

Patty clings to his hand, as best as she can when she’s feeling so weak. “Please stay,” she begs, face white, hands shaking. “Please stay until Stan gets here, I can’t, I don’t want to—”

“Yes, of course, Patty, I’ll stay,” Richie says, and holds onto her, and whoever was asking about him leaves. 

Richie has never felt so out of his depth in his life. There’s a woman groaning as she walks down the hallway with an IV and a man murmuring encouragements. Someone is wailing down the hall before a door is closed. Richie does not want to be here. He does not know what he’s _doing here._

He just knows that Patty wants him here. She wants someone here, with her, and he’s the one who’s available. So he stays. 

They’re trying to bring her blood pressure down. He knows that much. They’re monitoring things. They’re nervous about everything. Or maybe that’s just Richie. He’s listening to them rattle off numbers as if he knows what any of them mean. He’s calling Stan, updating him, letting Patty talk to him on speakerphone. He’s listening to the steady sound of baby’s heartbeat, terrified, desperate. 

An hour passes. They’re hoping Patty’s condition improves. That she stabilizes. But things don’t seem to be going well. Richie is trying not to shake too obviously, but Patty doesn’t notice, is barely conscious. Patty’s blood pressure goes up. 

Baby’s heart rate goes down. 

They tell Richie they’re going to have to perform an emergency c-section. Richie has no idea how to respond. He’s not the baby’s father, he’s not Patty’s husband, he’s just. He’s just _here._ He’s just here by chance. 

“Richie,” Patty says tearfully, grabbing at his hand, pressing it to her cheek. “Richie, I don’t feel good about this.”

“I know,” Richie says, throat so thick he can barely speak. “Stan’s gonna be here soon, okay? Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”

“Promise me you’ll take care of her, okay?” Patty says, as they get ready to wheel her into the OR. “Promise me.”

“Yes, of course,” Richie says. “Anything. But you’re going to be fine, you’re both going to be fine.”

“Make sure she gets skin-to-skin contact,” Patty says, wiping her tears with Richie’s hand like it’s a tissue. “And god help me, Richie, learn how to manage curly hair, because I just _know_ she’s going to inherit Stan’s.”

Richie laughs a little, his own eyes flooding with tears. “I promise,” he says. “But you’re not going to die and neither is Stan, you know that, right?”

“I _know that,”_ Patty says, breaths hitching. “I’m just making _sure.”_

“I’ll take care of her,” Richie promises. “I’ll take care of everything.”

They have to put Patty under for the surgery. Richie holds her hand until the last moment, when there’s a bang on the door and Stan rushes in, eyes wild, dressed in scrubs. Richie practically bolts out so that he can see his wife before she loses consciousness. 

And then he just. Stands there, in the hallway, because no one is telling him what to do or where to go and it’s deadly silent outside the OR and the only sound is the frantic hammering of Richie’s heart. 

A minute later—or maybe an hour, Richie doesn’t fucking know—the door opens, and Stan comes out. He looks pale and shaky and scared. He looks at Richie like he’s a ghost. 

Richie swallows hard. “How—how are things?”

Stan shakes his head. “She just went under. They’re starting surgery now. That’s all I know.”

Richie nods. He reaches for Stan’s hand. 

They’re both shaking. But someone has to be the brave one. 

“Come on,” he says. “I think the waiting room is this way.” 

They’re the only ones in there, which Richie thinks is good, because they’re both an absolute wreck. His eyes won’t stop watering and he has to keep wiping them surreptitiously. He doesn’t want Stan to see him crying. Not that Stan seems to notice much of anything, as he sits there, numb and silent. Richie rests a hand on his knee and doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing really for him _to_ say. 

Three times, Stan gets up and disappears to find a doctor to ask what’s going on. The entire operation isn’t supposed to take long. But time stretches on. Richie sits, and waits, and prays. He’s not very religious. But he thinks now is a good time to get into it. 

Stan returns and only whispers. “She’s losing a lot of blood,” he tells Richie. “There’s a lot of bleeding.”

That’s all he tells him—maybe that’s all he knows. Richie thinks he would offer all the blood in his body if he could. 

And then a doctor or a nurse or someone comes to _them,_ and says, “The baby’s been delivered. She’s doing well. Would you like to come meet her?”

“Yes. Of course.” Stan stands up on visibly shaky legs. “Rich?”

Richie blinks up at him, stunned. “Me?”

“Yeah,” Stan says. “Of course. Come on.”

Richie stands up uncertainly. The nurse doesn’t stop him. 

They’re led to a room, not the OR. A recovery room, or something. They sanitize their hands just outside the door. There’s another nurse there, holding a tiny, squirming baby in a towel. She wails pitifully. 

“Holy shit,” Stan breathes, and goes to her. 

Richie watches in shock and awe as the baby is handed to him. She’s so small, so _incredibly_ small, and so blue he almost wants to ask if she’s okay. As if he knows the first fucking thing about newborns. He certainly didn’t fucking know she’d be so _tiny._

Stan looks down at her with huge, shining eyes. He touches her tiny nose, and her tiny mouth. He breathes a shaky, _“Hi.”_

And then he looks up and says, “How’s my wife?”

The doctor looks grim. “There was a lot of hemorrhaging,” she says. “But she was waking up last I saw her. She might want to see you.”

“Yes. Of course. Richie?”

Richie blinks, and looks at him, and the next thing he knows, there’s a tiny, tiny baby being handed to him, crying and flailing. “What?” he says, fumbling to take her, aghast. “Stan, I can’t—”

“I need to go to Patty. You take her—I trust you.”

“I can’t,” Richie says, but he already has—he’s holding her, bundled in his arms, and she weighs absolutely nothing. 

“Take care of her until I get back,” Stan says, and leans over to kiss her tiny wrinkled forehead, and then starts to walk out. 

Richie gapes, at a loss. “Stan!” he says, panicking. And then, “What’s her name?”

Stan smiles. “Isabel,” he says, and disappears. 

“Isabel,” Richie repeats shakily, and looks down at her. 

He thinks he finally learns the meaning of love at first sight.

***

They take Isabel away from him, for a while. Patty’s awake—or at least semi-conscious—and these first few hours are crucial. She gets fed, Richie assumes, and held. He doesn’t get to be present for those, which only makes sense. But he’s happy. He’s happy Patty gets to see her, and Stan, and that she gets to have those first few normal hours. Or as normal as they can get.

But after that, the baby is whisked back out, and they seem to think Richie is waiting for her—she’s delivered back into his arms, and he’s moved to the maternity ward, like he’s the mother. They’d expected Patty to join them there, but whatever is happening doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon, so it’s...just them. Just Richie, alone in a silent room, sitting in a chair next to an empty bed. Holding a baby. Holding his best friends’ brand new baby. His goddaughter. 

“Hello,” he says, for the millionth time. Isabel cries and squirms and sticks out her tiny, tiny hand. It’s barely as big as Richie’s thumb. “Hello, Belly.”

She seems unhappy, and Richie doesn’t blame her. She just got yanked into this loud, bright, scary world two weeks too early, and now for some reason instead of being safe in her parents’ arms, she’s being held by this joke, who has no idea what he’s doing. 

“I know,” he says softly, cradling her, making sure to support her tiny head. “This kinda sucks, huh. I don’t know what’s going on, either.” Isabel wails. “Yeah, I feel you. This is bullshit.”

A nurse pokes her head in. “Everything okay in here?”

Richie swallows hard. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing.”

The nurse smiles. “You just sit there and hold her,” she says. “Try to soothe her if you can, she’s had a bit of a rough start.”

Richie nods dumbly. He strokes through her wispy little strands of dark hair. Stan’s curls, maybe. If Patty was right. 

He remembers something else Patty said. About holding the baby. “Can I— She’s supposed to do skin-to-skin, right? That’s important?”

The nurse hums. “It definitely has benefits, sure. She had some time with mom, I think.”

Richie nods. “I— Can I?” 

The nurse looks a little surprised, but she nods. “Of course. She might like that. Do you need help?”

Richie shakes his head. “No, I think I’ve got it.” He lays the baby along his thighs, her fragile skulled cradled between his knees, and unbuttons the top of his shirt. He’s a little sweaty, definitely kind of gross, and his chest is hairy, not at all like a soft, welcoming mother’s breast. But Patty was very firm about this bit—he unwinds the blanket from around Isabel and picks her up gingerly, one hand behind her head, the other supporting her bum. He leans over her, and presses her up against his chest, and then leans back until she’s lying on him, head tucked just under his collar. 

She calms almost immediately, whimpers softening to quiet breaths. Richie swallows hard and holds her close, feels her tiny ribcage expand and contract. 

“Oh,” he says softly, eyes stinging. 

“Good job, Dad,” the nurse coos. “You’re a natural.”

Richie laughs shakily and doesn’t correct her on either count. “Is she okay?”

“Who, Mom or baby?”

“Um, both.” Richie strokes a finger through Isabel’s hair, behind her velvet seashell ear. He’s never felt skin so soft. 

The nurse steps in to cover her with her blanket, over top of Richie’s hands cradling her. “You should be proud,” she says. “Mom was a fighter, she’s going to get through this. I don’t know the details but she’s doing really well, considering everything. And Isabel here is a little warrior. Scored really high on her Apgar and everything, right sweetheart? As far as we can tell she’s perfectly healthy. Just over six pounds, if you were wondering. A fierce little thing.” 

Richie smiles down at her, at the top of her fuzzy little head and her tiny clenched fist against his chest. His heart squeezes. “I knew she would be.”

He sits there in the maternity ward for a long time, holding Isabel. A few nurses come around to make sure things are okay and once to do some measurements. She cries at that, a pitiful noise, and Richie holds onto her after, cradles her, hums tunelessly until she settles against his chest again. She opens her little mouth against his skin. 

Richie can barely believe anything about her. He picks up her little hand, marvels at her miniscule fingernails, so perfectly shaped, barely even big enough to see. He looks at her tiny, wrinkly fingers, and her grabbing little hand. He leans back and looks at her face, the flawless curve of her ruddy cheek, her tiny button nose, each wispy eyelash. 

Everything up to now has been so scary and chaotic and nerve-wracking, but now he's here with this baby and she's sleeping and perfect and Richie's chest aches with it, he can barely stand it. He loves her more than he thought could be possible, is so struck with awe that she exists and relief that she does that he can barely speak. It floods him, threatens to spill out. He feels like…like he has to tell someone. He has to share this with someone. 

He needs to tell Eddie.

***

Eddie thinks it’s probably unhealthy that when his phone rings and he sees Richie’s name flash across the screen at ten in the evening, his first reaction is dread rather than pleasure. Eddie doesn’t exactly have a good relationship with out-of-the-blue phonecalls, and nobody calls these days if they can text. Whatever Richie’s calling about right now, in the middle of Eddie’s evening of oatmeal muffins and Jeopardy, can only be about an emergency, or bad news. Or a drunk phone call, maybe, to _deliver_ bad news. The kind of bad news Eddie anticipates receiving every single day, from Richie in particular. He knows it’ll happen someday. It’s bound to.

But then he picks up the phone, bracing himself, and all Richie says is, “Hi,” voice breathless and choked, and then, “It’s a girl.”

Eddie’s head spins. A thousand thoughts rush through his head at once, and he knows what Richie means, he knows _immediately_ what he means, but he’s so unprepared for it that he doesn’t know what to say. His voice gets stuck in his throat. When he finally manages to speak, all he gets out is, “Stan?”

Richie laughs. “Good try, but no, it’s actually your friend Richie.”

Eddie coughs out a laugh. “I mean, the— It’s the baby? Stan’s?”

“Yeah, she’s here. It’s a girl.”

“We already knew that,” Eddie says, feeling faint, rubbing his hand over his forehead. He’s at his house, on his couch, covered in muffin crumbs in front of the TV. He’s just been _sitting here,_ while his best friends had a _baby._ “We knew it was a girl.”

“I know, but I mean. She’s _here,_ Eddie, she’s a real live little girl.”

He sounds unbelievably proud, like she’s his, like he’s the one who grew a tiny human in his stomach and brought her into the world. And he sounds happy. So happy. 

“You’re at the hospital with them?” Eddie asks, trying to grasp the situation. 

“Yeah, I— I was with Patty when she went into labour, or. I don’t know, she suddenly started fainting, so I brought her to the hospital, and. Well. Baby.”

“She was fainting?” Eddie swallows thickly. “What happened? Is she okay?”

“Yeah, I think so, she. I’m not totally sure, she had really high blood pressure I guess, and they were worried about the baby, so. And then there were a bunch of complications during the c-section, I haven’t seen her yet, Stan’s with her I think, or at least he’s not here. But she’s okay, last I heard she’s okay, and the baby’s doing great, she’s wonderful.”

“Baby’s okay?” Eddie repeats, because his heart is rabbiting in his chest, he has to be sure. “She’s healthy? What was her Apgar score?”

Richie laughs, and that, more than anything, makes Eddie feel better. “I don’t fucking know, Eds, I don’t even know what that _is._ The nurse said it was high. She’s six pounds, two ounces. Very wrinkly, very squirmy, a little bit purple. Wails like a siren.”

“Good,” Eddie says, and he can hear the blood rushing in his ears. “That’s good. I’m guessing you don’t know her Ballard score either?”

“No, Eds, not a clue. But I promise she’s a very weird-looking baby, and everyone has said that’s very normal. She’s perfect.”

Eddie swallows hard at the warmth in his voice, the exhausted awe. He’s worried about Patty—of course he’s worried about Patty, he knows every single thing that could have gone wrong and that could still go wrong and he’s worried about all of them at once—but the way Richie sounds, settled and peaceful, soothes him like nothing else. And wrecks him a little bit, too, but that’s another matter entirely. “Where is she now?” he asks. “The baby.”

“She’s on me,” Richie says, his voice a hum. 

Eddie blinks twice. “She’s on _you?”_

“Yeah, she’s laying on my chest. Patty said it’s very important so I’m taking care of it.”

Very abruptly, Eddie feels like he is about to lose his mind. “You’re holding the _baby?”_

“Yes, Eddie, I am capable of holding babies. Apparently.” Richie laughs a little, like he’s shocked, too. “Here, let me show you.”

“What—” Eddie says, but then the call ends, and he doesn’t have time to say _no, Richie, really, there’s no need, I don’t need to see it, maybe it’s best if I don’t see it._ And then he’s getting another call, on Facetime this time, and he’s picking it up numbly to see Richie’s face, creased with exhaustion and concern and relief, his eyes impossibly warm, his hair wild. He smiles at Eddie softly, lazily, and it rams Eddie’s heart up into his throat. 

Richie pulls the phone away, and angles it down, and Eddie can see his bare collar, and then the top of a pink hat, and then one big hand spanning the entire back of a tiny baby, just above the edge of a soft blanket, and Eddie can’t breathe. He can’t breathe around the emotion coalescing in his chest, whatever it is, at the sight of it, at Richie cradling the tiniest baby Eddie’s ever seen against his bare chest, her eyes closed, her cheek pressed into Richie’s skin, her tiny mouth open in her sleep. Eddie can’t do anything but stare, pressure building mysteriously behind his eyes and around his ribs. It all threatens to burst as Richie tips his face down and kisses the top of her head gently, like an afterthought. “Oh,” he chokes out. 

“Her name’s Isabel,” Richie tells him, not even looking at Eddie, thumb sweeping over her little shoulder. “I’m making sure she’s warm and comfy. Anyway, I just wanted to call. I just needed to tell someone.”

“Yeah,” Eddie murmurs dumbly, and then blinks and says, “I’m the first person you called?”

Richie smiles, and kisses Isabel’s head again, like he can’t help himself. “Yeah,” he says. “Of course. Who else?”

Eddie’s very glad he’s sitting down, because his knees suddenly go very liquid. On the TV, Alex Trebek asks for three states on the West Coast whose abbreviations form a 6-letter word for frankness. “Oh,” he says again, like an idiot. He doesn’t know what else _to_ say. 

Richie doesn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says, some of his anxiety creeping into his voice for the first time. “Patty’s still in the OR, as far as I know. I think she’ll be fine. She’s super strong. But I don’t know if she’ll be able to take care of Belly for a while. So I might be a dad now.”

Eddie gets caught on what he thinks must be an absolutely terrible nickname for a second, but then it’s overtaken by a wave of fondness so powerful it threatens to bowl him over. “You’ll be great,” he says. “I seriously doubt it’ll come to that, Rich, but if it does, if it _ever_ does, you’ll be _great.”_

“I don’t know anything about babies,” Richie stresses, fingers tightening over Isabel’s back. She slumbers on, unaware. “What if I ruin her?”

“Stan and Patty obviously trusted you not to,” Eddie says. “And I do too. The worst thing that could happen is that she ends up like you. And honestly, Rich—” Eddie fumbles with his next words, but forces them out, because he has to. “Honestly, that’s not really a negative.”

Richie looks up into the screen for the first time since he began the call, meets Eddie’s eyes before Eddie is ready for it, and Eddie can see the emotions shining there, the muted terror and the overwhelmed exhaustion and the open surprise and everything else. It’s so much that it makes Eddie’s throat close up, makes him want to close his eyes against the onslaught and also to never, ever blink. He doesn’t think a screenshot would capture it. 

But all Richie says is, “Thanks, Eds,” and his voice is all soft and grateful. It goes straight to Eddie’s chest anyway, like a weapon. “Hey, I gotta go, I think I hear someone coming down the hall and I’m hoping it’s Stan. Call the others for me, okay? Everything was so crazy, we didn’t have time to update anyone. Tell them baby’s okay, and Patty’s—on her way to being okay.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I will.” 

“Alright. Thanks. I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.” Eddie thinks this would be a good time for a quick _love you,_ a casual _love you,_ but he never manages to force it out, and he thinks that’s best, anyway. He’s not completely sure those words are his to say, anyway. They push at his throat constantly, but he never knows exactly what they mean, never knows what _any_ of this means. Instead, he just says, “Bye.”

“Bye,” Richie says, and shoots him one last smile before ending the call. 

He leaves Eddie in ringing silence, with only Alex Trebek for company. Eddie draws a few deep breaths, and closes his eyes, rebuilds the image in his mind—Richie’s face, his eyes, his smile, and the baby on his chest, peaceful and safe. God. _Fuck._

Eddie thinks this might ruin him.

***

The approaching footsteps don’t end up being Stan’s, but the next ones are, maybe ten minutes later, when Richie is in the middle of a soft, overwhelmed cry, brought on by a mixture of sheer exhaustion and seeing Isabel sleeping peacefully on his chest as if she trusts him implicitly to take care of her. It’s between one sniffle and the next that Stan walks in, and he looks _terrible._ His hair is a wild, matted mess, his eyes are red with debilitating fatigue and long-shed tears, his face is gaunt and creased, and he looks terrifyingly unsteady, like he’s barely keeping himself upright. And then he looks at Richie, sitting there in the armchair with his baby, and he shudders and hiccups out a sob, and collapses onto the arm of the chair next to Richie, tucking his face into Richie’s neck to cry against his skin, one hand going up to rub over Isabel’s tiny fist over and over.

“Stan?” Richie says, fear clogging up his throat as he sits very still and tries not to dislodge him. “Hey, are you— Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Stan says, wet and shaky. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s— Everything’s fine I just, shit, Rich. This whole fucking thing has been such a mess and so fucking stressful and I’m so tired and—” He breaks off, breath hitching, and says, “I’m just fucking _happy.”_

Richie blinks. Happy was not the word he was expecting. “Yeah?”

“I’m just happy, I’m just, she’s here and she’s perfect and I love her and I’m so tired and worried, Richie, but god, if you hadn’t been here— What would I do if you weren’t here?”

“Everything would have been fine, Patty would have found a way to take care of herself, she’s strong like that—” Richie starts to say, trying to nip that panic attack in the bud, but Stan cuts him off again. 

“No, Rich, I just mean, I’m just. I’m just _relieved,_ everything has been so terrible but you took care of everything and she’s fine and you took care of her when we couldn’t and I’m, I just—” Stan’s breath shudders through him shakily, face still pressed into Richie’s shoulder, fingers still curled around his daughter’s hand. “I just feel so fucking lucky.”

“Oh,” Richie says quietly, something warm and powerful building in his stomach, forcing another few hot tears from his own eyes. His voice is thick and a little choked when he says, “Do you— Do you want to hold her?”

But Stan shakes his head, sliding a little closer to him, wedged between Richie’s thigh and the arm of the chair. “I don’t think I can even— Can I just stay here? For a bit?”

Richie nods, shifting closer to the other side of the cushion to give Stan more room. It’s a wide chair, but Richie is a wide person. He thinks two Eddies could sit in this chair, but a Richie and a Stan is a tight squeeze. But Stan doesn’t seem to mind, hooking one leg over Richie’s to curl into his side, hiding his face in Richie’s shoulder, sliding a hand under Isabel’s blanket to stroke over her shoulder, her back, pushing Richie’s hand away so that he can touch her, turning his face just enough to see her sleeping face against Richie’s chest. Richie supports her under her round, diapered bum with one hand, and wraps the other around Stan’s shoulders, because he thinks he could use the extra support, too. 

They sit there together for a few minutes, maybe five, maybe ten, while they both ignore the fact that Stan is still crying and just. Decompress, a little. Richie’s already had a chance to, here in the maternity ward, but now it’s Stan’s turn, and Richie is happy to aid in the process as much as he can. 

But eventually Stan’s tears run out, and he sits up stiffly, sniffles, says, “Can I take her, now?”

“Yeah, course. She’s yours, Stan.” Richie smiles and shifts around until he can carefully peel Isabel away from his chest, and she makes soft sounds of distress as he stands up to hand her to Stan. He shushes her gently, says, “I’ve stolen you for long enough, Belly, it’s time for you to bond with Daddy.”

Stan snorts softly, but his eyes are on his daughter, wide and amazed. “Of course you gave her the worst nickname imaginable,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t actually complain, busy tucking his daughter against his chest, rubbing his thumb over her cheek. “Has anyone...changed her diaper, or anything?”

“Not yet. Up to you, Pops.” Richie grins and moves to sit on the edge of the bed that will, hopefully, at some point be Patty’s. He quickly sobers at the thought. “How’s Patty? What’s going on?”

Stan sighs, lifting Isabel’s hand to his mouth to kiss her tiny palm. “She’s...stable. She lost a _lot_ of blood—so much that they were running out of O-negative for transfusions. If they can’t get more soon they might need to start whipping up weird cocktails for her, and just. I don’t know, everything’s a mess. They’re pretty sure she’s going to be okay but she might be in the hospital for a while. And recovery might take a long time, because of all the complications. And they’re, they’re worried about blood clots, and sepsis.”

Richie nods slowly, choking down his own anxiety. Stan doesn’t need that, and Patty is—Patty is strong. He knows she’ll get through it, no matter what. 

“I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” Stan sighs, closing his eyes. “I have some paternity leave I can take but it’ll run out, and even with our health insurance these hospital bills are going to slam us, I can’t really afford to take more time off work, and. Patty’s going to need me here but I don’t think I’ll be able to bring Isabel into the hospital when she’s so young and has no immune system, and just, how the fuck am I supposed to do it all?”

“Stan,” Richie says quietly, before he even knows what he’s going to say. “Stan, of course I’m going to take care of her. You’re _not_ supposed to do it all, you moron, I’ll do some of it. And the other Losers are going to do some of it, you know that. And I—I told Patty, I promised her I’d take care of the baby, and I will.”

Stan opens his eyes, and they’re wet with tears again, which Richie feels a little guilty about. But all he does is sag into the armchair and say, “Fuck, Rich. Thank you. I knew—me and Patty both knew that we were making the right choice when we chose you but I’m just. I’m so grateful, you have no idea.”

Richie smiles shakily, heart thudding against his chest, and then there’s a knock at the door and a nurse bustling in, saying, “You’re the father?”

Stan gives a tired smile. “Yeah.”

“I’m just the stand-in,” Richie says before she can ask, holding out a badge one of the other nurses made for him. It says _temporary parental figure_ on it, scrawled in black marker, and Richie loves it. 

“Alright,” the nurse says briskly. “Well, Dad, let’s see if we can help you get a few things figured out.”

Richie knows he should probably stay. He knows they’re probably about to talk about newborn care, and how to change a diaper, and how often she’ll need to be fed, and those are all things he will probably need to know, now. But these are some of Stan’s first hours with his baby. And he thinks he’s already intruded long enough. “I’ll step out,” he says, already on his way out the door. “Call me if you need me.”

It’s only once he’s standing out in the hall, with Stan and the baby out of sight, that Richie realizes the feeling rising up in his chest is panic. He’s been pushing it down this whole time, while he was taking care of Patty and then Isabel and then _Stan,_ but it bubbles up now, when he’s alone. He is just—he is fucking terrified. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing and this is his, this is his _duty,_ to take care of these people like he promised he would, because they _need him,_ and he’ll do it, he wants to do it and he will, he would do anything for them, but god he is terrified. He has not known what he’s supposed to do this entire time, has just been winging it, and it’s been okay so far but eventually that luck will run out. All of this is so new, and Richie is at a loss. 

He fumbles for his phone as his breaths go quick and tight, wondering if maybe he can get someone to come tap him out, take over while he goes home and tries not to have a meltdown on his couch. It’s late—it’s almost eleven—but maybe Bill, or Mike—

But then he sees that he already has a pile of notifications, and he opens them shakily, distracted from his thoughts. 

It’s mostly all from the group chat, and he scrolls up to find the first one, from Bev, half an hour ago. 

_Eddie told us about what happened with Patty. Thanks for being there Rich ♥_

Richie swallows thickly. Why is she thanking _him?_ He was just _there._

But Ben sent a message next, saying, _Yeah, thanks Rich, I’m sure Stan feels a lot better knowing she and the baby were in good hands._

And then Mike: _Send us updates when you can. And pics!_

And Bill: _Glad you’re there for them. Knew we could count on you._

And lastly Eddie, who just says, _Don’t worry, Rich, I told them not to worry. We know you’ve got this handled. Let us know how we can help._

And Richie doesn’t even need to read the rest of the messages to know they’re all agreeing, and repeating what he said, and just. _God,_ Richie has to lower his phone, because he’s fucking crying again. No one—no one has ever trusted him, like this. No one has ever looked at Richie Trashmouth Tozier and thought, _that’s a guy who can take care of things in an emergency._ And Richie doesn’t think he _can._ He doesn’t think he can do it. But his friends do, and that’s—that’s half the fucking battle, isn’t it? Having other people who believe in you. 

He sniffles, and wipes his eyes. He’s still fucking terrified. But he feels kind of good, too. He feels proud. He’s made it this far without fucking everything up. Maybe he can go a little bit further.


	2. Chapter 2

Isabel spends just over 36 hours in the maternity ward. Patty never joins her there. Richie never really leaves. 

Patty’s doing fine—Richie goes to visit her a couple times, when the other Losers are visiting Stan and Isabel and on his way back from finding food. Or, well, she’s doing...as well as she can be. But she’s in the Intensive Care Unit, she’s incredibly weak, and she wants, desperately to see her baby. Richie can’t even imagine. He shows her pictures, when he visits, and videos he took on a whim of her sleeping on him. She tears up, and touches the screen of his phone gently, and thanks him a thousand times for taking care of her. 

“You don’t need to thank me, Pat,” Richie keeps saying helplessly. “I’ve just— All I’ve been doing is _holding_ her.”

“You’ve been there for her,” Patty says, sniffling weakly. “You stepped up when she needed someone, Richie. I’m just grateful.”

Richie has to leave, then, or else he’s going to cry on her, and he doesn’t think that will help matters. 

He spends the rest of his time in the maternity ward with Stan when he’s not with his wife, and with Isabel always. Stan and the nurses take care of most things, changing her diaper and feeding her and burping her, and Richie mostly just hovers nervously and holds her when Stan leaves, and holds Stan when he returns, tired and overwhelmed and anxious. 

But eventually, after another night in the maternity ward and all of Isabel’s tests coming back clear, she’s discharged. Patty is not. 

Richie has been marvelling over how tiny Isabel is for a day and a half now, through exhausted tears and sleep-deprived rambling, but she has never looked so tiny as she does in her car seat, completely swallowed by this little seat made specifically for babies. They have to stuff a special insert inside to cradle her tiny body and keep her head stable, because she’s just so small. It almost makes Richie break down in tears again, seeing her wrapped up with just her little striped hat poking out over her tiny, wrinkly face, now sleeping peacefully. 

Actually leaving the hospital is a bizarre feeling. It’s getting close to noon, and the weather is beautiful, and people are outside living their lives, and Richie forgot the world still turned while his entire life was changing. There’s something dissonant about it, the solemn sterility of the hospital against the bright, terrifying chaos of the wide world, separated by a single set of sliding glass doors. He almost doesn’t want to leave. 

He definitely doesn’t want to leave. The hospital was stiff and quiet and staying would mean there’s something wrong, but in there the nurses were always around to help if anything happened, and everything was carefully controlled, there was no way for Richie to mess up. Out here, Richie’s on his own. And he has no _fucking_ idea how to put a car seat into a car. 

“You have to put it in backwards,” Stan says, lugging the seat back out a second after Richie put it down. “She’s too young for it to face forwards.”

“What? How is that— why does that make a difference?”

“I don’t know. It’s safer.” Stan settles the car seat backwards in the back of his mini SUV and starts attaching it with a bunch of hooks and straps. It looks unnecessarily and terrifyingly complicated to Richie. 

“Are you sure you’re doing it right?” he asks, chewing on his lip anxiously. “I wish the nurses or something came with you to make sure you’re doing it right.” Richie is a big fan of neonatal nurses. 

“I know I’m doing it right, I practiced,” Stan says, a little snappishly. At the same time, he yanks on a seatbelt in frustration. 

Richie scratches the back of his head and says, “Hey, are you...okay?”

Stan sighs heavily, finally clicks something in place. “Fuck. I just— I feel terrible about just leaving Patty here. She’d want to be here for this. We talked about this so much—bringing our daughter home and just, starting her _life_ together, starting our lives as parents together, and instead of that I’m doing this alone and she’s in the _hospital,_ Rich, she’s—” He exhales forcefully, face sickly pale and eyes red. 

Richie swallows thickly, settles a hand on Stan’s tense shoulder. “Hey, I get it, I’m sorry everything is so—”

“No, wait, _I’m_ sorry.” Stan rubs both hands over his face. He’s barely slept in days. “I shouldn’t have said I’m doing it alone, that was shitty of me.”

“Huh?”

Stan gives him a pointed look. “I haven’t been doing it alone. Patty’s obviously not been able to share all of this with me but you’re here and. I’m not ignoring that. I mean it.”

Richie blinks in surprise. “Oh, no, Stan, I— Don’t worry about it, man. I’m literally just, like. Standing here.”

“Yeah, and that’s huge, Rich. That’s right where I need you to be. And that’s where Patty needs you to be and where Isabel needs you to be and I just want you to know: we’re noticing you.”

Richie’s always been a bit of an easy crier but _god_ he has been on a hair trigger these past couple days. He clears his throat and blinks rapidly. “It’s nothing, Stan,” he manages to say, when what he really wants to say is _you don’t need to notice me. Please stop noticing me. I can’t handle everyone looking at me so much._

It’s a weird feeling. He’s built his whole career on his desire to be seen and noticed. But this feels different. This feels—too open. His friends _know him._ And it’s terrifying for them to see him. Especially now, when this baby and this whole experience has stripped him completely raw. 

Stan just sighs, and smiles, and then leans into the car to press a kiss to Isabel’s forehead before closing the door and getting behind the wheel. Richie hesitates, and then goes around to the other side and gets into the back next to the car seat. He knows it’s probably dumb, because she’s asleep and it’s not like he can take her out even if she wakes up, but he doesn’t want her to wake up and not see anything familiar. 

He lets her sleepily wrap her tiny fingers around his pinky and doesn’t move it for the entire ride home. He does not look at Stan watching them with warm eyes in the rearview mirror. 

They arrive back at the Uris household without incidence, and Richie tries to figure out how to extract the car seat for fifteen whole seconds before Stan laughs and does it for him. Fucking witchcraft. And then they’re taking Isabel into the house, and Stan is disappearing to find some things to bring Patty in the hospital, and Richie is unstrapping Isabel and lifting her out of her seat because she’s starting to squirm and fuss and he doesn’t want her to feel cold and alone in her own home. 

“Hey, Belly Baby,” he murmurs, bouncing her gently in his arms. She wails once, piercingly, and then goes back to squirming and whimpering quietly, pushing her face into his chest. He jostles her carefully, walking around the living room. “Hey, you weren’t asleep very long. I don’t think you’re hungry yet, but what do I know about being a baby? It has been a _while,_ let me tell you, and my memory of that specific time of my life was already pretty foggy before all that clown business, you know? But that is a story to ask your father about, because I would have a hard time telling it without swearing a lot.”

“You better not tell her about the fucking clown,” Stan calls from their bedroom down the hall. 

Richie grins and jounces Isabel as she fusses, letting her curl up against his shoulder as he holds her close. “Your father will also have a hard time telling it without swearing a lot, it seems. Anyway, shh shh shh, no more wibbling now, we’re all done with the wibbling, everything is fine and look! We’re in your house. Let me give you the grand tour.”

He walks her around the house slowly, pointing out the kitchen she will not use for another several years, the highchair she is still too small and floppy for, the bathroom she has no purpose for except maybe for taking baths. He shows her the guest room, where Richie has slept off hangovers and manic episodes at least four times, and Stan and Pat’s room, where she’ll be sleeping in the bassinet for a while yet, and then to her own room, for when she’s a little bit older. 

“I helped paint the walls,” he tells her, even though he thinks her eyes are probably closed now that she isn’t crying anymore. “I think it’s a very cute shade of yellow, it reminds me of banana cream pie. But maybe I’ve just convinced myself I like it because I’ll be wearing it for the rest of my life on the clothes I was wearing that day. I also bought you this dangly thing for over your crib. I also bought you this little lion. I went a little overboard with the buying of things, I’ll admit. I thought maybe that was all I would be able to offer you. But now I see you also like my rumbly chest and I respect you for that, Belly, I really do. Not many people only like me for my body. I’d say you might be the first.” 

He bounces her over to the white dresser on the opposite wall. “And look, I also helped your mom put these pictures up for you of your parents with all your favourite Losers. You’ve met them all now except Eddie, because he’s afraid of hospitals, which I also respect due to childhood trauma. You understand.” 

He smiles softly at the photos, of all of them together, smiling and openly happy. There’s one on the left of them as kids—minus Patty, of course—and then one of them as adults on the right. Eddie’s next to Richie in both of them, pressed close to his side. Richie has him in a headlock in the first one, and he’s laughing his ass off. He has his arm around Eddie’s shoulders in the second one. He’s not brave enough to touch him that often anymore. “You’ll like him,” he tells Isabel quietly. “I do.”

“Hey, Rich?” Stan says, walking in with a duffel over his shoulder. “How are you two getting along in here?”

“Wonderfully, Stan my man. What do you need?” Isabel stretches, and Richie hurries to accommodate her. 

“I’m probably going to be heading back to the hospital in an hour or two to bring some things over and stay with Patty a while,” Stan says. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be. Do you know how to get her bottle ready and stuff?”

Richie tenses up. “Oh, um, are you sure you’ll be gone that long?”

Stan frowns and shrugs. “I won’t be gone for the rest of the _day,_ but she eats, like, every two hours, three max. And you might want to learn. I mean, if you can’t take her obviously I can stay—”

“Oh, no!” Richie says, too loudly—Isabel grunts and squirms in displeasure. He bites his tongue. “No, of course, I’ll take her. I can take her. No problem.”

“Are you sure?” Stan presses. “I’m serious, Rich, you’ve gone above and beyond already, you can go home and relax and, you know, think about something other than babies.”

“Oh, not a chance,” Richie says fervently. “I will not be thinking about anything other than babies no matter where I am. You know how men are, only think about one thing: babies.”

Stan snorts. “Yeah, for sure that’s the case in my experience.” His expression shifts to something softer. “Are you seriously sure? You’re not at all obligated to stick around all day, or even at all, you have done more than enough.”

“I am!” Richie insists, bending his head to kiss Isabel’s head, just so he doesn’t have to look at Stan’s face. “As godfather I am chained to this tiny baby for life.”

“That’s absolutely not true at all, but thank you. Please, _please_ promise me that when you need to go, you will go. I don’t want to feel like you can’t leave.”

“I will,” Richie insists, but already knows it’s a lie. He’s not going to make Stan and Patty deal with this alone. He’s not going to make this already incredibly stressful situation even harder for them. He _will_ be here for them, whenever they need him, no matter what. Which means he _will_ learn how to feed a baby. 

Even if the very idea terrifies him. 

But Richie helped kill an evil murder clown once, so he can definitely do this. He is perfectly capable of putting Isabel down in her little bassinet and scrubbing his hands clean like he’s about to go into surgery and watching Stan boil bottles and rubber nipples and measure out and mix formula powder and all kinds of wild shit. Richie writes notes on his phone like he’s never heard of Google. Stan taps out a couple drops of mixed formula onto Richie’s wrist to show him how warm it’s supposed to be. Richie nearly asks for a thermometer. 

And then he’s sitting down in the big armchair, and Isabel is waking up and being pushed into his arms, and Stan is handing him the warm bottle, and Richie is fumbling it into her mouth like he has no idea how eating works, even though he’s watched Stan do this a dozen times now. 

Immediately, Isabel latches and starts sucking furiously. 

“Oh,” Richie says, watching her wonderingly. He’s not sure why it feels so awe-inspiring—she’s just _eating._ But something about it seems miraculous anyway. 

“There you go,” Stan says, perched on the edge of the adjacent couch, smiling as he watches. “Make sure she’s upright.”

Isabel spits the bottle out and fusses, and Richie looks up at Stan searchingly. “She doesn’t want it.”

Stan laughs. “Just try again, Rich.”

Richie does, nudging the bottle up against her mouth, and she sucks it back down again. God, he’s a fucking moron. 

Stan doesn’t seem to notice. He just smiles and says, “See? You’re a natural.”

Richie doesn’t feel like a natural. He feels like any second now he’s going to fuck something up. He’s going to do something wrong and he can’t, he can’t afford that, Isabel is too small and too fragile and Richie is a huge, lumbering fuck-up. 

But they get through the feeding without any glaring mistakes. Stan shows him how to hold her upright or lean her against his shoulder and pat her back until she burps. Afterwards, she’s wide awake, looking around with big, unfocused eyes. Richie holds her and looks at her and says, with feeling, “God, what an angel.”

Stan is taking a picture of them on his phone when Richie turns around. He grins at Richie, and says, “She’ll probably fall asleep in a couple minutes, now. You want me to take her back?”

Richie shakes his head. “No, that’s okay. I’ve got her.”

“Yeah,” Stan says. “I know you do. Hey, would you mind if I took a shower?”

“No, go ahead. I’ll be on baby watch.”

Stan nods and disappears, and Richie walks around the living room in circles with Isabel squirming in his arms, staring up at him with eyes a dark, strange non-colour. “Hello,” Richie says, probably for the millionth time since she was born. “It’s just you and me, Belly Baby. Just two babies, hangin’ out. One excessively big, the other excessively small. What do you think about that?”

Isabel answers by hiccupping dramatically, in a way that wracks her entire body. 

“Oh my _god,”_ Richie says. “Stan!”

Stan refuses to leave his shower early to watch her hiccup, which Richie honestly thinks is his loss. 

By the time he comes back out, Isabel is asleep, and Richie is stubbornly insisting that he is perfectly fine to watch her while Stan brings Patty some things at the hospital. 

“I’m super capable,” Richie says confidently. “I just rocked a baby back to sleep.”

“She’s not even two days old, Rich, sleeping is the only thing she knows how to do.” Stan huffs out a tired breath. “Okay, if you’re _sure,_ I will go. But you can call me if you need me. Or if you need to take a nap or something. You’ve barely slept since she was born.”

Richie shrugs. “I’ve cat-napped. I’m fine. Go! Your wife awaits.”

“Alright! I’m going. Okay.” Stan takes a deep breath and leans in to kiss Isabel’s forehead, and then clasps Richie’s shoulder. “Thanks, Rich. I owe you.”

“You do not,” Richie says. “Get out of here.”

Stan quirks a half-smile and goes. 

Richie smiles in satisfaction, takes a deep breath, and then panics.

***

Eddie has been having a very trying couple of days.

For starters, he’s an A-class worrier, and this whole Patty-and-baby situation is prime material for worrying. He has thought of every single thing that could feasibly go wrong and calculated the likelihood of all of them based on the current statistics available to him and picked his top four to worry about the most and started working on a number of contingency plans that he would definitely run by the Uris family if he didn’t think it would make him sound crazy. He also did all of this on company time, and three times nearly sent his boss charts projecting the likelihood of a new mother requiring an emergency hysterectomy.

So that took up about 60% of his brainspace, which is a very normal-person amount in his personal opinion, and then another 30% has been consumed with how much of an asshole he is for not going to visit them a single time in the hospital. He _wants to,_ he really does, he wants to visit them so bad because everything is shit and they could use the help and the company and it’s not helpful for him to be at home drafting emails to the hospital about making sure they’re taking appropriate measures to reduce risk of blood clots. 

But _god,_ hospitals just fuck him up so bad. Seeing his dad stuck in one for so long as a kid was bad enough, but then his mom dragged him back every other weekend for ten years making him think he was going to drop dead at any second, and then he developed a very real paranoia about all health professionals straight-up lying to him after the placebo incident. And then he forgot about the details of all that due to clown magic bullshit but retained a completely irrational but profound sense of discomfort in relation to hospitals and one time had a panic attack when he had to get his appendix removed. 

Just, there are so many levels of bullshit and paranoia in his fucked-up brain, and he knows it’s stupid, but it all comes down to: he can’t do it. He can’t make himself go in and see his friends and their baby and he feels like _shit_ about it. And he knows it makes sense because his finely-aged brand of manic anxiety is not exactly the energy he should be bringing into that space but it’s bullshit that he’s _like that._ But he is and he can’t help it and it’s fucking stupid. 

And then, of course, the remaining 10% of his already chaotic brainspace is being taken up by sheer, unadulterated pandemonium every time Stan posts a picture of Richie holding the baby to the group chat. 

It’s ludicrous. Eddie doesn’t know what’s happening to him. He can only assume that he’s mentally unstable from all the other shit going on and that’s why this picture Stan just sent of Richie holding his daughter and looking at her with wide-eyed awe is completely fucking _unzipping_ him. He can’t handle it. 

Eddie has a lot of feelings about Richie basically all the time. He is very aware of that, it is not news, he’s come to terms with the fact that his relationship with his best friend is just, fucking fraught with emotions Eddie cannot and will not name at this time in his life because the idea of it terrifies him. He just, he doesn’t understand why this is _getting to him_ like it is. He doesn’t even want kids. He, he never wanted kids when he was with Myra. He doesn’t think he wants kids now? But god _damn_ this whole thing is doing him in. He keeps saving Stan’s pictures to his phone. He keeps looking at Richie’s huge fucking hands. He keeps accidentally thinking that he didn’t know they could look so gentle. 

The point is, Eddie is tired. He is not as tired as he assumes Patty or Stan or Richie are, but his brain hurts and he’s emotionally exhausted and sometimes Eddie wishes he could be fucking normal for just, like, one day. 

But today is not that day, as his phone starts vibrating in the middle of him looking at the picture of Richie and the baby again and feeling feelings and thinking thoughts, and lo and behold, Richie’s name is flashing across the screen. He swallows three times before he picks it up. “Edward Kaspbrak speaking,” he says, like a fucking moron. 

“Hey Spagheds,” Richie says, blessedly ignoring him. “Just, really quick, off the top of your head, what are the odds of something really terrible happening if, hypothetically, there was a baby with a wet diaper and I was theoretically too chicken-shit to change it.”

Eddie opens and closes his mouth several times before saying, “I’m not a fucking WebMD page, Richie.”

Richie laughs, soft and rough. “Could’ve fooled me, Dr. K.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, even though Richie can’t see him, for posterity. “Are you...are you alone? With the baby? Stan just sent a picture a few minutes ago—”

“Yeah, no, he’s at the hospital. With Patty, just hanging out, not anything scary.” Eddie hates that Richie knew he needed the reassurance. But also loves it. Or something. “I’m babysitting. Only it’s been like over an hour now and Belly’s diaper is all squashy and I know that means it needs to be changed but just, hypothetically—”

“You don’t have to keep saying that, Rich, do you really think I think it’s hypothetical?”

“—what if I was too scared of doing it wrong somehow.”

Eddie sighs loudly to draw attention away from the fact that his chest is tightening painfully at how concerned Richie sounds and the fact that he called _Eddie_ and no one else, and pulls his laptop closer to him. He clicks away from his third drafted hospital email and types in a couple search terms. “I’m pretty sure if you are capable of wiping your own ass, you can wipe a baby’s.”

“Don’t overestimate me,” Richie says. 

Eddie grimaces. “How complicated can it be? You take the diaper off, clean the baby, put on a new diaper.”

“I don’t know. You haven’t held her, Eds, she’s so tiny and fragile. One wrong move and— I mean, I don’t even want to think about it.”

Eddie’s heart clenches again, goddamn him. “Well, it looks like you’ll have to risk it, or else she could get diaper rash or a UTI or something.”

Richie huffs a sigh across the line. “Are you sure that’s good risk assessment? Are you weighing the probability of me accidentally hurting her versus the possibility of her getting a little rash?”

“Don’t you fucking dare put that on me,” Eddie says. “I don’t have statistics for that shit.”

“Yeah, shit, sorry, sorry. I’m sorry. I’m nervous. I don’t want to hurt her. And she cries when I lay her down on her back.”

Every day, this dumbass makes Eddie feel so many fucking feelings. It’s not fair. He’s trying to take a year off from feeling feelings. “Just YouTube it, Rich. A million stupid dads learn how to change their babies’ diapers every year. And you’re only half-stupid.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Richie says. “Okay, yeah. Yeah, I can do it, right? It can’t be that hard.”

“Right,” Eddie says, and doesn’t admit that he wouldn’t dare do it himself for a million dollars. “Hey, Rich—”

Someone—Eddie assumes it’s the baby—wails on the other side of the line. Richie makes a pathetic sound. “Hold that thought, Spaghetti. I’m gonna go do something very brave and very stupid.”

“Oh, okay. Good luck.” 

“Yeah, thanks man.”

“Hey,” Eddie says quickly, “keep me updated, okay?” _Not because I’m worried,_ he doesn’t add. _But also not because I just like it when you call me. Not because I just like that when you need to call someone, you choose me._

“Yeah, I will. Bye.” And he hangs up. 

Eddie puts down his phone and breathes like he was holding his breath for the entire duration of the call. It’s fucked up, is what it is. 

A few minutes pass silently. And then a few more. Eddie thinks some thoughts he will not put concrete words to. They mostly centre around the tight fullness in his chest. He looks up some diaper-related statistics online. In times of stress, statistics are the only thing that make any sense. 

Richie doesn’t call him back. Eddie gets increasingly worried. He really thought there was no way Richie could fuck it up but maybe he was wrong. He doesn’t google that, for his own sanity. He also doesn’t want to start getting ads based on the search terms _diaper related death._ After six minutes, he picks up his phone and presses redial. 

“Oh, hey,” Richie says when the call goes through. “Sorry, I was gonna—” He cuts off to sniffle. 

“What?” Eddie says. “Richie, what the fuck happened?”

“Nothing, everything’s fine,” Richie says. “She’s just—she’s _really_ tiny, Eds. The diaper’s half as big as she is. How can someone even be that small?”

Eddie almost hangs up on him. He doesn’t think it’s healthy for his heart to be under this much conflicting stress. “I don’t know, Rich,” he says. “Hey, um, speaking of, of seeing her, I— Do you know when Stan’s going to be back? Or, I mean, it doesn’t matter if he’s there, but. I was just thinking, I haven’t met her yet, and—”

Richie sniffs loudly and clears his throat. “Yeah, yeah, no, come. Come on over. Hear that, Belly Baby? Uncle Eddie’s gonna come meet you. It’s never too early to start learning about car accident rates in the United States.”

Eddie coughs to cover up a laugh. “I’m not going to tell her that, dumbass, I’m— She’s not going to grow up like I did. She’s not gonna be...scared. Like I was.”

There’s a long silence, and then Richie says, “Yeah. I know she won’t.” And then, “You know what you _will_ have in common?”

“Hm?”

“Your obnoxious friend, Richie Tozier. I’ll see you in a bit, Spaghetti.”

He hangs up before Eddie can say anything. Eddie thinks that’s probably for the best. 

He leaves almost immediately for Stan’s place, because if he doesn’t he might talk himself out of going somehow, and drives with laser focus through Saturday afternoon traffic, because Richie reminded him about car accident rates in the United States. And also because Isabel is expecting him and he doesn’t want to die before he ever sees her and cause extra stress for Stan. 

He arrives unscathed and with only a minor cramp in his shoulders from being so tense, and knocks on the door gently before keying in the password to let himself in, just in case the baby’s asleep. When he walks in, it’s to the scene of Richie holding Isabel upright in his lap, facing him, and leaning over to give her cheeks what appears to be one thousand kisses. 

Eddie’s jaw drops. His heart plummets through the floor. Insanely, he thinks, _god, I wish that were me._ He knows he doesn’t mean Richie. He tries to convince himself he does. “Rich,” he says loudly. 

Richie jerks upright. “Oh!” he says, also too loud. “Holy shit. I didn’t hear you come in.”

Eddie swallows thickly. He had expected Richie to be...floundering, most likely. Every time Richie has contacted him so far he’s been either in the middle of panicking or audibly on the brink of it. He’d expected Richie to look completely out of his depth. 

Instead, he’s standing up easily, cradling the baby against his chest like he’s done it a million times, like it’s natural. He’s bouncing her gently and patting her back. Isabel wails. 

“Sorry,” Richie says, bouncing her against his chest. “She’s been mad at me ever since I changed her. I think I did like five things wrong. She didn’t like it at _all._ Give me a second, I just fed her.” He walks around the room, swaying her back and forth. “Belly Baby,” he says very seriously, “you’re giving Uncle Eddie a terrible first impression. Although I bet he was a scream-y baby too. Actually he still is.”

Eddie can’t even reply, watching Richie cradle her carefully in one arm while he unbuttons the top few buttons of his shirt until she can press her face into his bare collar. She seems to like that, or maybe just the new position, because she quiets down quickly. Eddie is fucking stunned. 

“There you go,” Richie murmurs. “Good girl. Eds, why are you standing so far away? Come meet her.”

Eddie walks over on stiff legs. Richie kisses the top of her head and holds her out towards him. Eddie shrinks back. 

Richie frowns. “You don’t want to hold her?”

Eddie chews his lip. He tugs at the edge of his sleeve. “That’s okay,” he says. “She’s happy with you. I’m fine to just look.”

Richie searches his face for a moment, and Eddie really wishes he wouldn’t, ever. “Okay,” he says eventually, and pulls her back into himself. “Well, say hi.”

“Hi,” Eddie says, and steps closer again to peer down at her. She stares up in his general direction with wide, round eyes. It makes Eddie feel a little weak. “Hi, sweetheart,” he says, more quietly. 

He can see Richie’s enormous grin out of the corner of his eye. “She should fall asleep again soon,” he says confidently. “But she’ll be awake for a few minutes yet, most likely.”

Eddie nods and sticks out his finger to nudge her tiny, tiny palm. Her fingers curl around it automatically. (Palmar grasp reflex. All babies have it. It feels special anyway.) 

“So here she is,” Richie says, voice low and warm. “What do you think?”

Eddie swallows hard. “That’s a— That’s a baby alright.”

Richie laughs. “Yeah. Sure is.”

Eddie is terrified of her. He tries not to make it obvious. He steps back as far as he can without retracting his finger from her grasp and looks up at Richie again. “So how are, uh, how are things around here?”

“Pretty okay, I think,” Richie says. “Sometimes. I think she’s mostly okay. She’s not crying, so, I think that means I’m doing something right at the moment.”

A smile tugs at Eddie’s lips. “I mean, like, with you. How are you doing? This has all been...a lot.”

“Oh.” Richie looks surprised, as if no one has thought to ask him that yet. “Yeah, I’m. I’m okay. Busy learning things. A little bit nervous and overwhelmed, is it obvious?”

“Not as much as I thought it might be,” Eddie admits. He strokes the back of Isabel’s hand with his thumb. “Have you...eaten? Slept?”

Richie shrugs guiltily. “Not too much? I’ve been kind of busy, you know, trying to keep another human alive. Another several humans, honestly.”

“Didn’t you say she’s supposed to sleep now?” Eddie glances down at Isabel, whose eyes are starting to droop. 

“Yeah, probably. That’s kind of what she does, just eat and sleep and eat and sleep again.”

“So go...sleep while she sleeps,” Eddie suggests. 

Richie blinks. “I mean. I could, I guess, but. If Stan’s not here I get nervous I won’t hear her crying or something, or if she makes any sound I wake up right away.”

“I can watch her,” Eddie says before he can stop himself. “I mean, just while she’s sleeping. So that you can feel like, you know, she’s okay and nothing is happening to her.”

Richie runs a hand through his hair. It’s matted and wild and desperately needs to be washed. “I should probably, like. Wash her bottles and stuff, though, if she’s sleeping.”

“I’ll wash and disinfect them,” Eddie says. “And I’ll make _you_ something to eat, too, god, when’s the last time you ate?”

Richie smiles ruefully. “I had a coffee?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “That’s what I figured. Go take a fucking nap, dipshit. I’ll find something in the cupboards.”

“You don’t have to do that, Eds,” Richie says quickly, but he’s already eyeing up the couch thoughtfully. 

“Obviously I do. This is why people co-parent and shit.” Eddie moves to pick up the mostly-empty bottles sitting on the coffee table. He immediately misses Isabel’s warm little hand around his finger.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. I’m Stan’s stand-in husband and you’re mine.” And Eddie doesn’t even have time to lose his mind over that before Richie adds, “And don’t swear so much around my baby, _dipshit.”_

Something about Richie saying _my baby_ like that, like it’s just the plain fucking truth, absolutely destroys Eddie. He has to splash water on his face at the sink while Richie’s bringing Isabel over to her bassinet, like he’s in the middle of a breakdown. _Get it together Kaspbrak,_ he tells himself punishingly. _He’s just a man who loves a baby, that’s like. Super normal, probably._

What is absolutely not normal is how wobbly his knees get when Richie turns around and smiles at him, or the way he looks at the baby sleeping in the bassinet next to the couch and thinks _for the love of god please do not wake up before Richie does,_ or the way his heart skips a beat when Richie presses a kiss to her dark, wispy hair. 

“Thanks again, Eds,” Richie says as he shuffles his way towards the guest room. 

“No problem,” Eddie says numbly. 

He thinks he very much has a problem.


	3. Chapter 3

“Richie. Go home.”

“Nnnn.” Richie fights to drag himself up through six layers of mind-numbing exhaustion. He cracks his eyes open. Stan is standing in front of the couch with Isabel in his arms, sucking on a bottle. “No.”

“Richie.” Stan gives him a very serious look. “It’s been six days. You’ve been wearing the same clothes for three of those, and there’s definitely baby puke on your shirt. Go. Home.”

“I’m fine, Stan, I was just taking a nap.” Richie yawns so hard his jaw cracks—his neck is aching from falling asleep sitting up. He pulls his shirt up over his head, because it really is gross. “I’ll just go and wash this and then I can take her—”

“Richie.” Stan gives him a look that is immeasurably fond and warm. “It’s fine. I swear. I am _insanely_ grateful for everything you’ve done so far and all the time you’ve spent here and the hours you’ve watched her so that I could be with Patty at the hospital. I mean that. But I can single parent for one day. You can go home. Find clean clothes. Eat your own food. Sleep uninterrupted for more than an hour.”

“But what if you need to leave?” Richie asks, rubbing his hands over his eyes. It feels like there’s sand under his eyelids—he really _hasn’t_ been sleeping. 

“Then I’ll call someone,” Stan says patiently. 

“You’re just politely trying to tell me that you’re sick of me,” Richie says, and flops over sideways on the couch. He can feel a soother poking into his stomach. “After all I’ve done for you?”

“I’m not sick of you, Rich,” Stan says. “Having you here has been amazing. But it’s time for you to go home now. Please. Before you end up feeling resentful forever over all of this.”

“That’s not going to happen, Stanley.”

“I am not asking you, _Richard._ It’s getting late. Get out of my house and get a good night’s sleep, for everyone’s sake.”

Richie sighs and hauls himself upright. “Fine,” he says, sticking a finger in Stan’s face. “I see that you are kicking me out so I am going. But if you need anything, call me, okay?”

“Yeah, Richie.” Stan smiles, tired but fond. His face is wan, and his hair is a mess, and his clothes are rumpled, and he looks kind of terrible. Richie wishes there was something more he could do to help. He knows it’s hard for Stan, with his wife in the hospital and his newborn daughter at home, both constantly on his mind, pulling him in two different directions. And Richie also knows he can only do so much. Can only provide so much relief. 

And now Stan is asking him to go, so Richie will go. 

The full extent of how sleep-deprived he is really makes itself known once he’s gotten his shirt back on and his feet shoved into his shoes and found his keys and it’s time to say goodbye. He says, “Okay, let me hold Belly one last time before I’m banished,” and then he has her in his arms, quiet and squirmy and wide awake after her feeding, and his eyes go all hot and his nose starts to burn. 

“Rich?” Stan says. 

Richie sniffs and blinks hard. “M’falling asleep standing up,” he lies, and presses a kiss to Isabel’s forehead. “Bye, Smelly Belly. Be nice for your dad. And don’t forget what we talked about: capitalism is a system of exploitation and oppression. Stay woke.”

Stan rolls his eyes exaggeratedly, and Richie uses that moment to blink his eyes furiously and give her another two kisses. And then he hands her back and quickly leaves, before he bursts into exhausted tears or something. 

He’s in his car—for the first time since he drove here to visit Patty on the day of the delivery, actually—when he feels his phone vibrating in his back pocket. He jams his keys into the ignition and picks it up without checking the name. “Hello?”

“Oh, good, you’re alive,” says Eddie’s familiarly exasperated voice. “Why didn’t you answer any of my texts?”

“Oh,” Richie says. He turns on the car and puts the call on Bluetooth. “I fell asleep. By accident.”

“While you were holding a _baby?”_

“What? No, Stan had her. I would never fall asleep holding the baby, Eds.” Not that he had literally ever thought about it before Thursday. 

“Oh, right,” Eddie says. He clears his throat. “I kind of forgot that you, like. Are ever not holding a baby.”

Something about that is hilarious to Richie. Just, for a second he pictures himself holding a baby, and it’s hysterical. _Him?_ Holding a _baby?_ He shouldn’t be allowed to hold _babies._ He knows he’s been holding babies for almost a week now, but suddenly the idea of it is insane to him. Him! Richie Tozier! Holding a baby!

“Uh, Richie?” Eddie says uncertainly. “You okay, man? You sound a little bit like you’re losing your mind.”

Richie stops laughing and shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I just woke up. I’m going home because Stan banished me.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “That’s actually what I was texting you about, before.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, just. I’m at your place right now. Cleaning out your fridge. I knew you hadn’t been here in a while and I got nervous that everything would spoil but you’d try to eat it anyway. I threw away some cream. And some moldy cheese. And some old leftovers.”

Richie is suddenly overcome with deep, fathomless affection. God, he loves this obnoxious man. This fucking stack of neuroses in a trench coat. He’s come back a couple times to visit Richie and Isabel since that first day home, mostly when Stan is at the hospital so that he can help out, bringing them food and cleaning up the messes they’re too tired to clean up and prepping bottles for later use. He never actually holds the baby, although Richie thinks Eddie probably hopes he doesn’t notice, but he does lots of other stuff. The other Losers have all visited too, at least once, and most of them came with meals too. But it feels different when Eddie does it. Maybe just because everything feels different, for Richie, where Eddie is involved. 

“Thanks, Eds,” he says finally, a second late. “That’s adorably paranoid of you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Whatever. Sorry for letting myself into your house.”

“Nah, Spaghetti Man, you know you’re always welcome. Mi casa es su casa and shit.” It makes Richie feel unreasonably warm and tingly to know Eddie feels comfortable just walking into his empty house. Sometimes he just wants to scream with how much he loves him. Or maybe that’s the sleep deprivation again. “You can stay, if you want,” he says quickly, before he can overthink it. “I’ll be home in ten-ish minutes. We can hang out a bit, if you’re not busy. Sans baby.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, like he’s surprised Richie would ever want to see him when he’s not providing baby care services. And then there’s a very long pause before he says, “I actually, I can’t, tonight.”

Richie’s stomach drops through the floor of his car. He swallows thickly. “Oh,” he says. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ “Hey, that’s okay. Wild plans tonight? Hot date?”

Eddie’s never said yes to that question, but Richie asks it on a painfully, masochistically frequent basis. For someone who’s had a really long time to come to terms with his unrequited feelings, he has a lot of honest-to-god nightmares about the object of his affections one day falling for someone else. Richie likes to torture himself with the thought of it, as a way to keep things fun and fresh in his life. 

Today, Eddie just says, “Yeah, no, I just have some stuff to do at home. I’ll probably be gone before you get here. So. I’ll see you...around.”

“Yeah, sure,” Richie says. His eyes are burning again. Fucking _stupid._ He’s just tired. He knows this isn’t a big deal. But it feels like _shit._ “See you, Eds. Thanks again for the unsolicited housecleaning service.”

“No problem.” There’s a long, awkward pause. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

Richie hangs up. He drives home slowly. He doesn’t want to see Eddie anymore. He doesn’t want to see anyone. 

No one wants to see him. 

His house is dark and quiet when he arrives. It still smells a little bit like spoiled food—Richie hadn’t taken the garbage out before leaving for almost a week, either. There’s a sticky note on the fridge. _No longer a hazardous waste zone. -E_

Richie pulls it off and crumples it in his fist and sniffles a little. 

He knows his main problem is that he’s over-tired, so he heats up a frozen burrito in the microwave and eats it while the outside is still burning hot and the inside is a little cold, and then he brushes his teeth and changes into clean pajamas and goes the fuck to bed, yanking his curtains closed against the still-setting sun. He doesn’t want to deal with today anymore. Today fucking _sucks._

He passes the fuck out almost immediately, and then sleeps hard for a couple of hours until suddenly jerking wide awake in pitch darkness, chest tight with anxiety. 

It’s weird. There’s a feeling low in his throat, and behind his ribs. It’s an ache in his bones. A vague terror. He feels very, very alone. He sits up and thinks, _I need to check on the baby._

Except there is no baby. Or, there is, but he’s not in charge of it. He was, in fact, asked pointedly to leave. Stan didn’t want his help anymore and Eddie didn’t want to hang out with him and Richie’s head is pounding from being wrenched from sleep in the middle of the night and his bed feels very big and very empty, even though he hasn’t shared a bed with anyone in a really, really long time. And he’s so tired and suddenly so guttingly lonely and for one singular week he felt kind of important and useful and maybe even a little bit worth someone’s time, even if it was only a baby’s, and now he feels like _shit._ And his arms feel achingly empty. And he can’t stop straining to hear a baby crying in another room. 

He has his phone in his hands before he’s even made the decision to make a call. His entire body is shaking a little. He thinks he might be having an emotional breakdown, but isn’t entirely sure why. 

Eddie picks up on the last ring. “Richie?” he says, voice rough and low. “What’s wrong?”

Richie may have forgotten that it’s something like two in the fucking morning. “Do you hate me?” he asks shakily. 

“What? Rich, what are you talking about?”

Richie sniffs loudly, rubbing his hands over the soft fabric of his pajama pants, over and over. “I don’t know. You went home before I got here and didn’t give a reason so I was wondering if maybe you hate me. If you did I’d like to know so I don’t embarrass myself.”

“What the fuck are you— Why would I hate you?”

“Oh, don’t even get me started,” Richie says with a groan, lying back down. “I’m sorry, Eds, I shouldn’t have called, I just woke up and then, I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry—”

“I don’t hate you,” Eddie says, cutting him off. “I don’t know why you would think that but I don’t. You’re my best friend, Richie. You always will be.”

For some stupid reason, that makes Richie want to cry. He’s always crying these days. “I just feel like shit,” he says, rubbing over his pajama pants again. “You’re my best friend, too.”

There’s a brief pause, and then Eddie says, “I had a therapy appointment.”

“...Huh?”

“That’s what I had up, tonight. An online therapy appointment. That’s why I had to go home.”

Richie blinks a few times into the darkness. “Oh. I— I didn’t know you went to therapy.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t just tell you,” Eddie sighs. “It’s stupid. I’ve only had a couple sessions. I can’t do the, like, clinics, because. Fucking hospitals. I don’t know. But Bev told me about these online therapists. It’s just on webcam and shit. It’s— I don’t know, I think it’s good. I mostly just try to talk through a panic attack for an hour and then I have to spend the entire evening recovering. So. That’s why I couldn’t hang out.”

“Oh,” Richie says. “I’m— That’s really cool, Eddie. I mean, that’s really, like. Brave. I’m glad you do that.”

Eddie sighs again. “I don’t know. Thanks, I guess. I should have told you.”

“No, that’s okay. I mean, that’s your own business, if you didn’t want to tell people—”

“No, I should have,” Eddie insists. “You’re my best friend. I’m sorry I have such a shit brain.”

Richie laughs a little, and it comes out wet. “I’m calling you in the middle of the night to ask if you hate me,” he says. “I think I win shittiest brain award tonight.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and Richie likes that he doesn’t try to fight it. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Richie groans. “Everything is shit. And I feel like everyone hates me. And my head hurts. And Stan sent me home but I don’t want to be here. It’s too quiet and I, I want to be holding a baby, which is _fucked up.”_

There’s a pause, and then Eddie says, “It’s not fucked up, Richie. You’ve been taking care of her for almost a week.”

“She’s not even my baby,” Richie says, voice hitching a little. 

“You were there when she was born,” Eddie says. “And you’ve been there this entire time. It makes sense that you’ve gotten kind of attached.”

“It just felt really good,” Richie says pathetically. “I liked holding her and taking care of her. But Stan probably thinks I was overstepping boundaries and like, getting obsessed with his daughter, and didn’t want me around anymore.”

“I am literally _positive_ that that is not the fucking case,” Eddie says. “What did he say when he told you to go home?”

Richie sniffs. “That I should get some sleep. And that he didn’t want me to be resentful. But he could have been making excuses.”

“When has Stan _ever_ tried to sugarcoat anything for you, Rich? If he thought you were overstepping boundaries, he would tell you straight-up, and you _know_ it. He probably thinks you feel obligated to stay, and feels bad for dragging you into his mess.”

Richie’s head pounds. “But I like being there,” he says, rubbing the heel of his palm over his forehead. “I’ve never taken care of anything before.”

There’s a brief pause, and then Eddie says, “Then tell him that. And go back to sleep, Richie. Stan’s right—you _do_ need to get some sleep. It’s no wonder you’re losing your mind, if you’re up all night with separation anxiety.”

Richie huffs a laugh. His eyes water traitorously. “I can’t stop worrying about her,” he admits. “She can’t do anything for herself. I know Stan is a good dad but I can’t stop worrying that she might need me.”

“Now you know how I always feel,” Eddie mutters, and Richie laughs a little at that. “You’re a really good temporary parent, Richie. Stan’s really grateful to have you. And he’s really lucky. And so is Isabel. And I’m really proud of you.”

Richie’s breath catches in his throat. “For what?”

“I don’t know. Everything. Stepping up. And calling me instead of just suffering alone all night, like I always do.”

“Oh.” The lump in Richie’s throat aches. “Thanks, Eddie. You can always call me too, you know? You’re my best friend.”

“I know. Thanks, Rich. Go to bed, I’m barely awake.”

Richie smiles shakily, imagining Eddie laying in bed with his eyes closed and his phone pressed clumsily against his ear. “Okay,” he says. “Goodnight.”

“Night,” Eddie says, and hangs up. 

Richie lies in bed for a long time, thinking about...all of that. His bed still feels very empty. He still feels as bizarrely touch-starved as he did before Derry. But for a second, he aches desperately for Eddie to fill that gap. It’s something he tries not to think about too often. It’s not good for him. But Eddie makes it hard sometimes. 

He sniffs, and closes his eyes, and tries to sleep for a couple more hours, as instructed. 

By 6am, he’s helplessly awake and has reached his limit. He texts Stan. 

_Hey, can I come over? I want to hold Belly._

Stan texts back within the minute. _Please. If you don’t mind. I’m dying._

Richie grins, and hauls himself out of bed. 

“She was up every hour at least,” Stan sighs half an hour later, handing her over before collapsing onto the couch. “I don’t know how single parents do it.”

“I missed her,” Richie says, cradling her against his chest, trying to soothe her pathetic whimpers. “I didn’t like being gone.”

“You’re always welcome,” Stan says. “I don’t want you to think she’s your responsibility, but I don’t think she liked you being gone, either. You’re always welcome.”

“Okay,” Richie says, smiling down at Isabel shakily, letting her hold his fingertip in her tiny hand. “Okay.”

***

Saturday marks the one-week anniversary of Isabel coming home from the hospital, and also the fifth time Eddie has given into the nearly overwhelming urge to go watch Richie hold a baby in person. And to help with the baby. Of course. That’s the real reason he keeps going. Really.

He heads over early in the morning, knowing that Stan plans to spend the majority of the weekend with Patty on what are hopefully her last days in intensive care and before he starts going back to work the following week. When he shows up, there’s a note stuck to the door over the doorbell that reads, in Richie’s familiar handwriting: _Ring this bell and I will see you in hell. Losers welcome. Everyone else fuck off._

Eddie grins, punches in the passcode to get in, and walks into the house quietly. 

The Uris household is nearly completely silent, as Eddie closes the door gently behind himself and toes off his shoes. All he can hear at first is a soft hum, like someone left a radio on somewhere. Eddie walks slowly down the hall towards the sound, wondering if it might be a white noise machine, something to help Isabel sleep. The closer he gets, the more sure he is that it’s coming from her room. Her door is mostly closed, but not all the way—he pushes it open with his foot. 

Richie and Stan are both sitting on the futon against the wall across from her crib, their eyes closed. Stan is visibly asleep, his curly hair a mess where his head is pressed against Richie’s broad shoulder, his glasses clutched loosely in his hand on top of Richie’s thigh. Richie’s head is tipped to the side, cheek pressed into the top of those curls, one earbud trailing from his ear to his phone tucked into the front pocket of his shirt, which is hanging open over his chest. He has one arm wrapped around Stan’s shoulders, and the other is cradling Isabel against his bare chest, where she’s sleeping as peacefully as her father. 

And the sound that Eddie heard is Richie, _singing,_ low and soft and muddled. His thumb strokes over Isabel’s shoulder in time with the music, and he trails off into humming where he doesn’t know the words or maybe doesn’t have the energy to form them. There’s soft morning sunlight filtering through the sheer yellow curtains of the window above them, casting golden light down on them, licking at the edges of them, sleepy and warm. They look close and comfortable, tangled up in each other. Eddie tamps down the vague jealousy that sparks behind the fond affection that threatens to overwhelm him. 

He clears his throat, knocks gently against the door. Immediately, Richie’s eyes are snapping open, and he’s straightening with a jolt, clutching Isabel close to him. “Oh, holy shit,” he whispers, eyes focusing on Eddie in the doorway. “I didn’t hear you come in, Eds, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Don’t know how I could have been less startling,” Eddie laughs softly. “I walked in and heard you singing.”

“Oh,” Richie says, ears going red. “Well, don’t make fun of me, the only one who was supposed to hear me was a baby.”

“You calling me a baby?” Stan asks groggily, shifting against Richie’s side. 

“Aw, dude, you heard me too?” Richie groans. 

“It was nice,” Eddie says, and then immediately regrets how soft his voice sounds and adds, “Like that gorilla mom from Tarzan.”

Richie snorts. “Apt,” he says, as Stan peels himself away from Richie’s side and rubs his hands over his face. Richie adjusts Isabel gently on his chest. “I think she likes the vibrations when she’s lying on me. You know how babies like sleeping against dryers or in cars or whatever? That’s me, only squishier.”

“It’s honestly magical,” Stan says, yawning and stretching. “I definitely did not mean to fall asleep.”

“That’s why they call me Richie Tozier, baby _and_ man tamer. Women are just a lost cause all around.”

Eddie coughs out a laugh. “Do they call you that?”

“Well, you can start.” Richie shakes out the arm that had been wrapped around Stan and then smoothly transfers Isabel into it so he can stretch out the other one. “You going to see Pat, Stan?”

Stan nods, standing up and slapping his face gently with both hands. “Yeah, if I can stay awake long enough to drive there. You’re okay to take her?”

“Stan. My idiotic temporary husband. If you ask me that one more time I’ll murder you with my bare hands.” 

“You don’t have to be married to co-parent,” Eddie says, like a moron. 

“Shut up, Secondary Temporary Husband,” Richie says. “Stan, go to the hospital.”

Stan goes, after reminding Richie another four times to call him for absolutely any reason. “I can’t believe I trust you two alone in my house,” he says at the door, shoving his feet into his shoes. 

“How dare you,” Richie says, soothing Isabel back to sleep after she wakes up with a wail. “I’m a changed man, and Eddie Spaghetti is a paragon of middle-aged responsibility. He’s got a 401k and everything.”

Stan rolls his eyes. “That’s what I’m saying, dumbass. I trust you. I just can’t believe it.”

Richie blinks. “Oh.”

“Bye, Richie,” Stan says with a small, fond smile. “Bye Eds. Bye Iz, I love you.”

“Love you too,” Richie calls after him. 

The door closes. The house goes very quiet. 

Eddie stands behind the kitchen island, already elbow-deep in sanitizing bottles. Richie turns around to look at him, carrying Isabel belly-down across one forearm, her face tucked into the crook of his elbow, like she’s a loaf of bread. She looks perfectly peaceful, skinny little arms and legs hanging down on either side of his sturdy arm, eyes closed, mouth open. Richie carries her like this as if he’s done it a million times, as if he was born to hold babies. For a wild second, Eddie thinks those arms and hands, strong and steady, _were_ made to hold babies. It makes him want to die a little. 

Richie clears his throat, and Eddie snaps back to reality. “Anyway,” Richie says. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Eddie says, and wonders if Richie noticed he was looking at his forearms. He probably thought he was looking at the baby. Right? Yeah. He was! Kind of.

“I’m gonna go...put her down,” Richie says. “And then I’m going to make us some food.”

“I can make us food,” Eddie says. 

“Shut up. I’m trying not to forget how to feed myself.”

Eddie can’t watch him cook. He can only handle so much competence in one day. 

Two hours later, they get more visitors—Ben and Bev show up out of the blue, bearing a shitton of groceries and wide smiles. Richie greets them with a grin from where he’s coaxing Isabel through a couple minutes of tummy time on the living room floor, flat on his own stomach in front of her. “Hey guys!” he says, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “Join the party.”

“Hi Richie,” Bev says warmly. “Hey Eddie.”

Eddie waves from where he’s wiping down all the counters and appliances in the kitchen. He’s pretty sure he accidentally became the Uris’s housecleaner. 

“We texted Stan before we came,” Ben says, setting down an armload of bags on the table. “He said you were out of a few things.”

“I love you all so much,” Richie sighs. “Do you need help putting things away?”

“Nope, you stay right there, doing whatever it is you’re doing,” Bev says, stepping over him to crouch down and pat Isabel’s back gently. 

“I’m aiding in her development!” Richie says. “I’m practically Super Nanny.”

“I believe you,” Bev says, and bends over to kiss the top of his head. “You look very cute doing that.”

“Thank you,” Richie says smugly. 

Ten minutes later, Eddie has been dragged away from the kitchen by Bev, and he’s sitting on the couch with her, watching Richie show Ben how to feed the baby. Bev tucks her feet up on the couch cushions and leans against Eddie’s side, head on his shoulder, and sighs, “Aren’t they sweet?”

Eddie tracks the way Richie’s hand curls around Ben’s to tip up the bottle and swallows thickly. “Mhmm.”

“Look at Richie,” she murmurs, hand on Eddie’s knee. “Doesn’t it make you just want to cry a little?”

Richie tickles Isabel’s tummy and presses a thumb into the sole of her little foot and smiles down at her. Eddie chokes back a pathetic noise. “Bev, I literally cannot talk about it or even think about it directly. It’s like staring at the fucking sun.”

Bev is quiet for a second, and Eddie feels her gaze flick up to her. He pretends to ignore it, face hot. She huffs out a soft breath and says, “Oh, honey. Do you want to talk about it?”

Eddie feels like his face is about to melt off. “No,” he says, quiet and urgent. He still hasn’t looked away from Richie and his big, gentle hands, and his soft, happy smile. “No, I do not, even a little bit. In fact I might never be able to talk to you again.”

“Oh, _sweetie,”_ Bev sighs, and Eddie wants to fucking _die._ But all she does is press closer against him, her body warm and soft and familiar, one arm curling around his waist as she cuddles in close. “Eds, you know you’re one of my best friends, right?”

Eddie blinks in surprise and looks down at her. She doesn’t look up, just watches her husband as he feeds a baby for the first time. “Huh?”

Bev presses her face into his shoulder. “I don’t know if I ever could have gotten through everything without you,” she says. “You...understand me, and what I’ve been through, in a way no one else does. You’ve been there for me this whole time.” She squeezes him gently. “I know I can trust you with everything. And I hope you know you can do the same with me.”

Eddie sighs, throat tight and eyes stinging. “Yeah, I know,” he says, voice hoarse. “I know. I do. I— Maybe one day I’ll be ready. You know? But not yet.” He wraps an arm around her and squeezes back. 

“Okay,” Bev says. “Love you.”

“Yeah,” Eddie murmurs, and lets himself soak in this feeling, this open affection, these easy touches. Eddie rarely touches anyone, is not the kind of person who invites people to touch him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t _want_ it. And the Losers are all pretty tactile people but Eddie is stiff and prickly and—this is nice, is all. He likes this. 

Across the room, Richie turns around suddenly and looks at them. Eddie feels, for a moment, like he must be doing something wrong, but Richie doesn’t say anything, just looks. Something unreadable passes over his face, flashes in his eyes. Eddie can’t parse it. He thinks it’s probably dangerous to try. 

“Okay, Marsh,” he says suddenly. “You’re up for baby-burping duty.”

Bev laughs and uncurls herself against Eddie. “Yeah, okay. That’s fair.”

Isabel falls asleep fifteen minutes later, cradled in Bev’s arms in the armchair, and Ben perches carefully next to her on the arm, like he just wants to be close to her even though there are more comfortable places to sit. Richie drops himself onto the couch next to Eddie where Bev had been before, and his knee presses into Eddie’s. It’s small and barely even noticeable, but Eddie is hyperaware of it, can’t stop shifting his leg just to feel Richie’s move against it. He presses the side of his socked foot into Richie’s, bare on the living room carpet, and thinks he might die from it. It’s ridiculous. 

And then Richie slings a casual arm across the back of the couch, in the middle of a long-winded rant Eddie isn’t listening to, like it’s nothing. The closeness of it is almost overpowering, which is absurd, because Bev was much closer than this literally _minutes_ ago. So this should be nothing. It’s _nothing._

It doesn’t feel like nothing. Eddie’s a fucking wreck. 

He’s almost relieved when Ben and Bev have to go, and Eddie has an excuse to get up and start puttering around again, searching the cupboards for laundry detergent so he can toss in a load. Richie trails after him for a while, silently, and seems to half-start a sentence a handful of times, but he always ends up just clicking his mouth shut and saying nothing. Eddie tries not to think about it. 

“Hey, Eds,” Richie says after maybe fifteen minutes of this. “Belly should probably sleep for another hour-ish, maybe more. I think I’m gonna go try to...squeeze a nap in. I’m pretty beat.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Yeah, okay. For sure, get some sleep.”

Richie nods slowly, watching him. “Just— I’ve been having a hard time sleeping at all. For some reason. So, I’m just going to try.”

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll keep an eye on things.”

Richie watches some more, and then nods, and disappears. 

The truth is, Eddie hates baby-watching duty. He understands the importance of it and he does it gladly, but he hates every second of it. Richie is down the hall in the guest room, and Eddie is alone with the baby, fast asleep in her bassinet in the living room, and Eddie is practically frozen with fear. What is he supposed to do if something happens? What if he walks too loudly and she wakes up? He doesn’t know how to take care of a _baby._ He doesn’t even know how to— He can’t even _hold her._

But Richie is tired, and he asked Eddie to watch her, so that he could take a nap. So Eddie is watching her. Because he’s whipped. 

For the first five minutes, Eddie just stands there in the living room, eyes glued to Isabel’s tiny form, swaddled tightly in a yellow blanket that Eddie realizes belatedly he bought her. He listens to her breathing neurotically, like she’s just going to stop breathing suddenly, and when she starts hiccuping in her sleep he nearly has a panic attack. Eddie just—he really doesn’t know what he would do if something happened. He doesn’t know anything about babies. Nothing apart from stats he’s run a dozen times. He has zero hands-on knowledge. 

Eventually, he tears himself away from the bassinet, before he can start hyperventilating for no reason. He tries to busy himself with quiet chores nearby, glancing over at her often as he sweeps the floor and wipes some picture frames. Fifteen minutes pass in silence. Twenty. Eddie’s shoulders relax, just a tiny bit. Richie’s probably fallen asleep by now, and Isabel’s hiccups have subsided. 

And then Isabel lets out an absolutely piercing wail out of nowhere, for no goddamn reason, and Eddie rushes to her side, heart rabbiting. “Shit,” he hisses, reaching out as if to cover her mouth and then remembering that’s fucking _murder._ His palm hovers over her face uncertainly, and then he taps her tiny mouth gently, whispering, “Hey, shh, don’t cry please, you should still be asleep and so should Richie.”

Isabel doesn’t listen to him, drawing a deep breath and then letting out another impressive cry. Eddie makes a desperate noise and looks back down the hall towards the guest room door, which is still closed, and then down at Isabel again. She’s squirming and whimpering and bawling, and Eddie lets out a puppyish whine in response. “Shit, shit, shit,” he says, patting her tummy. “Hey, what’s wrong? Don’t cry, please don’t cry, I’m completely unequipped to deal with crying.”

And all he can think of is Richie picking her up when she cries, cradling her against his chest, bouncing her gently, soothing her until she falls back asleep. She always seems to fall back asleep for him, at least once or twice before she’s actually hungry or needs something. All Richie has to do is pick her up and bounce her a little. 

Isabel belts out one more wailing note, and Eddie makes a high-pitched sound of panic and reaches into the bassinet to lift her out, desperately chanting, “You’re okay you’re okay you’re okay,” and only half directing it towards the crying baby. She feels impossibly clumsy in his arms, all wrapped up in her blanket like a little burrito, and she’s warm and squirmy and Eddie is so scared of not supporting her neck enough that he’s probably squeezing her head too hard. His heart is slamming against his ribs as he gingerly rests her head against them, muffling her sobs and rocking up on his toes, and all he can think is _what if I drop her, what if I’m hurting her, what if—_

And then she whimpers, and gulps down a loud breath, and quiets. 

“Ah,” Eddie says, swallowing hard. “Okay, you’re okay, right? All done crying. We’re okay.”

He takes a few careful steps, lifting and dipping like they’re on a fucking boat. She makes a few fussy noises, but they’re soft and muffled. Eddie breathes for the first time since she first started crying. “Okay,” he says again. “That’s better.”

“Oh,” says a voice from the hall. 

Eddie twists his head sharply, and sees Richie standing there in the entryway to the hall, jaw dropped, eyes bright behind his crooked glasses. Eddie goes hot and thinks _oh god. I’m holding her wrong, aren’t I._

“Hey,” he says shakily. He feels about one second away from bursting into tears himself. “Sorry. She, um. She started crying.”

Richie shakes his head. “No, it’s. It’s fine. You’re holding her.”

Eddie clears his throat. “Um, yeah. I didn’t want her to wake you.”

“Fat chance.” Richie’s mouth quirks into a half smile. “Look at you, Eds. You put her back to sleep all by yourself.”

Eddie looks down at Isabel, who is grumbling against his chest but has closed her eyes. He bites his tongue. “Do you, um, do you want her back?”

Richie shakes his head again, and walks closer. “Here,” he says, touching the back of Eddie’s hand where it’s clutching her head. “Spread your fingers. Just cup it gently.”

Eddie lets out a slow breath and does as he’s told, relaxing his hold. Isabel makes a soft sound, turns her head to the side, presses her cheek against Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie’s heart swells dangerously. 

“There you go,” Richie says. “And then just support her under the bum. See? It’s easy.”

It doesn’t feel easy to Eddie, who feels like she’s so fragile he could break her at any second. But she weighs almost nothing, and she’s quiet now against his shoulder, and warm, and pliant. He breathes shakily. “Yeah,” he whispers. 

“She likes you,” Richie says gently, one strong, steady hand covering Eddie’s, making sure he’s holding her comfortably. “She likes her Uncle Eddie.”

The about-to-cry feeling comes back to Eddie, eyes and nose burning. “I didn’t know what to do,” he says, voice choked. 

“You did it just right,” Richie says, swaying both of them back and forth the way he usually rocks Isabel back to sleep. “There you go, see?”

Eddie nods stiffly, heart pounding again, for completely different reasons. God, _fuck._ Richie is pressed close to his shoulder, one hand on top of Eddie’s and the other on the small of his back, moving them back and forth, back and forth. His eyes are heavy-lidded, like he’s only half-awake, and he looks completely relaxed, perfectly happy to be where he is. And Isabel is breathing quietly against Eddie’s collar, like she’s comfortable, like she trusts him. And Eddie can barely hold all of it in his chest. It feels like it’s spilling out of him whenever he opens his eyes or his mouth. And now Richie is humming softly, the same song he was singing when Eddie walked in today, and Eddie is— Eddie is terrified. He’s terrified of how much he’s feeling right now. And at the same time all of him aches, as if he still isn’t feeling enough, as if all of him wants more. A breath shudders through his lungs. 

It’s physically painful to pull away from Richie’s hands, but he makes himself do it. Richie blinks his eyes open in surprise, like he’d fallen asleep standing up. Eddie fights a smile onto his face and doesn’t meet his eyes, pretending he doesn’t feel cold at the loss. “I’m gonna put her back down,” he says quietly. “You can go back to sleep if you want.”

“Oh,” Richie says, hands flexing where they’re hanging in the air. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

Eddie nods and turns away to lay Isabel back down gingerly in her bassinet. When he turns back, Richie is pretending he wasn’t just taking a picture of him. He clears his throat, and then disappears back down the hall. 

Eddie checks on Isabel again, and then collapses onto the couch to recover. God _dammit._


	4. Chapter 4

At 12:05 on Monday afternoon, Richie picks up a call from Eddie, who forgoes pleasantries to say, “Hey, why the fuck aren’t you working?”

Richie blinks a few times, wedging his phone between his ear and shoulder as he carries Isabel in one arm and dabs at a spit-up stain on his shirt with his free hand. “Huh?”

“I just got a phone reminder that you’re supposed to have a show tonight. In Philly. You are not in Philly.”

Richie frowns, gives up on the stain. Half his shirts have them already. “Why do you have a phone reminder for my show?”

“It’s so I can know when to worry,” Eddie says. “And also so I don’t forget to wish you luck.”

Richie’s stomach dips dangerously. He sways over to the couch from the sink, trying to soothe Isabel’s squirming. “Aw, Spaghetti. That’s so cute of you.”

“Yeah, whatever. So why aren’t you _there?”_

“Oh, I cancelled, obviously,” Richie says, and bounces Isabel gently as she lets out a brief wail. 

There’s a beat of silence, and then Eddie says, _“What?”_

Richie laughs a little. “I’m taking care of a baby, Eds. Of course I cancelled my shows. Stan’s back at work now, you know. Who else was going to take her?”

“I don’t know, a nanny or something? You have a job too, Rich!”

Richie just shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, I guess. But I’m not hard-up for cash and I have a job that I can take a break from. It was an easy decision. I’m needed here.” He tickles Isabel’s tummy and smiles. 

It’s nice to be needed somewhere. 

Eddie is quiet again on the other end of the line. Richie thinks he hears him clear his throat. “Well,” he says after a moment. “How did people react?”

“To me cancelling shows? I honestly have no idea, I’ve had better things to think about.” Richie juggles his phone again for a second to drag his laptop over from the other side of the couch. He’s been working on a little new material here and there, mostly about temporary fatherhood. He doesn’t have a lot else going on. 

He opens a new tab now, brings up Twitter. He has approximately one zillion new notifications that he hasn’t bothered checking. A few of the top ones are complaints about him cancelling a show on short notice, a few others are people defending him and saying he must have had a reason, and is he okay? Is he sick? Is he dead? Richie hasn’t tweeted at all since the baby was born, and he’s usually saying dumb shit on a daily basis, so he’s not surprised people are concerned. It’s kind of nice. 

_sorry for disappearing!!_ he types out quickly with one hand. _i’m on parental leave!_

He posts it without another thought, and then goes back to the phone, where Eddie is anxiously asking him how he’s doing, without Stan or anyone else there at all during the day. 

“Oh, it’s not too bad,” Richie says. “I mean, I’m really tired, but babies are surprisingly low maintenance, if you think about it. I’m getting pretty good at the basics, feeding and burping and changing and stuff. Like, the house is an absolute disaster, and I don’t sleep very much, and I leave stuff like baths to Stan, and sometimes she cries a lot and I don’t know why and I think maybe I’m messing her up, but the learning curve is pretty steep when you’re doing something literally all day.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Eddie says. “Is she asleep right now?”

“About halfway there,” Richie says. “Oh, never mind, she’s got her eyes open now and she’s glaring at me.”

“She can probably barely even see you,” Eddie says. “Babies can only see a couple feet in front of them.”

“Short-sighted, just like her Uncle Richie.” He grins and lets her hold his finger. “Eds, what if we got Belly little tiny baby glasses? She’d look even more like Stan.”

Eddie huffs a quiet laugh, the kind of sound he makes when he doesn’t want to think something is funny but does. “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.” And then, “Did you just tweet something?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, you reminded me I probably should. What— Do you have a notification for that, too?”

“No,” Eddie says quickly, in a way that means _yes._ God, Richie loves him. “Just, oh my god, Rich. Why would you tweet this and nothing else?”

Richie laughs, shifting Isabel so that she’s halfway propped up against the arm of the couch and he can click around on his laptop again with his free hand. “I like to keep ‘em on their toes,” he says, and looks at the notifications rolling in. 

_WHAT,_ say most of the replies, paired with various gif reactions ranging from confused to fainting with shock. And then, following that, a lot of people who straight-up don’t believe him, sending him laughing emojis galore. 

_No way,_ says Twitter user rxchietxzier. _He probably just got like a cat or something lol. Or he’s just making excuses._

Someone else replies to them, saying, _I wouldn’t even trust Richie Tozier with a cat, much less a real human baby._

Richie winces, and frowns, and thinks, _okay, yeah, that’s probably fair._ Even though he’s _holding_ a fucking baby in his _arms._

And that person isn’t the only one saying it. _He can’t even take care of himself_ 😂, someone says. _No way he’s telling the truth,_ says another. _Someone’s probably on parental leave to take care of HIM._ A third person says, scathingly, _Not a fucking chance Richie Tozier is mature enough to care about anyone other than himself._

“Wow,” Richie says weakly, forcing a laugh. “People do _not_ think very highly of my ability to be a parent. Or, in fact, to do literally anything.”

Eddie is quiet for a second, and then says, “Yeah, fuck ‘em. They haven’t seen you in action.”

Richie hums vaguely. “I mean, they’re not totally wrong.”

“Are you kidding?” Eddie says immediately. “Rich, come on. You _just_ told me you’re getting good at this stuff. You’ve been taking care of her half on your own for a week.”

Richie sniffs. “Yeah, but who knows if I’m doing it right? She’s probably gonna grow up traumatized or something. You were right, Stan should probably hire a nanny or something, before I fuck up his daughter.” He looks down at Isabel in his lap and touches her ear through her little yellow hat gently, an apology for swearing. 

“Richie,” Eddie says reproachfully, and Richie feels bad even before he knows why. “I’m serious. These people don’t fucking know you. I know you, and _Stan_ knows you. You’re not that person anymore, if you ever were. You’re not useless. And you’re the fucking _opposite_ of selfish.”

Richie blows out a slow breath. He knows that. He _knows it._ But it’s still— It’s hard to believe it. Sometimes. A lot of the time. “Listen, Eds,” he says. “I gotta run to the store while Bells is still asleep.”

“You’re going to _leave her?”_ Eddie says immediately, voice rising. 

It feels like a slap to the face. “What? Eds, come on, of course I’m not—” Richie swallows down the sting in his throat. “I’m not. I’m not a fucking moron.”

“Shit. No, I know, I’m sorry Rich.” Eddie’s voice comes out fast, a little desperate. “I know you’re not. I trust you— I’m sorry. I’m the moron, I know you would never do that.”

Richie forces a smile onto his face, even though Eddie can’t see him. He hopes it helps his voice come out light when he says, “Whatever. It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. I’m fucking stupid, I don’t know why I said that. I said I trust you and I do, I just. I don’t know, I’m used to treating everyone like they’re fucking incompetent but you’re not. You’ve been doing so good, Rich. A million times better than I could ever do.”

Richie bites his tongue, tries to get a fucking grip. He knows Eddie wasn’t serious, that if he’d thought about it he wouldn’t have said it, that he’s always said this kind of stuff to Richie and it was usually deserved. He knows all of them have shit to work on and ways they need to grow and. Maybe Richie’s is to stop taking everything so fucking personally. He smiles a bit more convincingly this time. “Thanks, Spaghetti Head. I really do have to go, now. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Send me pictures,” Eddie says quickly, like he thinks Richie might hang up on him. “Of the baby, not of you. I mean, you can be— I just meant, send me baby pictures. Good luck at the store.”

“Thanks,” Richie says, and laughs a little. “Fight some people on Twitter for me, yeah?”

“Always,” Eddie says, and that makes Richie laugh louder. “Bye, Rich.”

“Bye, dickhead.”

He hangs up, and he’s not sure he’s feeling better, but in the ensuing silence, he can look down at Isabel in his lap, sleeping peacefully with her tiny mouth open and her delicate eyelashes fluttering and her hand flexing like she wants to be holding onto his finger again, and his chest feels lighter and looser. Right now, he thinks, there’s nothing else he could be doing. She’s happy enough to be sleeping, and she feels safe in his lap. And that’s something. 

It’s a bit of a juggling act to get her tiny, sleeping body into the baby carrier he has only ever seen Stan put on once before. He knows he needs to learn how to use it, because it’d be a life-saver to keep his arms free when Isabel is too cranky to sleep anywhere but on him, but he’s always so scared of hurting her somehow. 

But he really does need to go to the store, and even more than that, he suddenly feels like he _has_ to get out of the house, feeling stifled and claustrophobic in this house he’s barely been outside of in a week. So he gets the carrier on, and then tucks Isabel into it so that she’s facing him, face smushed up against his chest. She grumbles a little at all the jostling, but settles again quickly, snoozing away. Richie grins triumphantly. 

See? He can— He can do things. He may not be the...the best caretaker or anything. He may not be anyone’s first choice for Reliable and Capable. But he’s not, he’s _not_ the fuck-up everyone thinks he is. 

He tells himself that over, and over, and over. 

There’s a store maybe a fifteen-minute walk away from Stan’s house, and Richie spends every second of it checking on Isabel anxiously, worried that the fabric is chafing her soft little legs, or that it’s too tight for her to breathe, or whatever the fuck. But she seems perfectly content inside her little cocoon, snug and warm, and by the time he gets to the store and gets his cart, she’s still fast asleep. 

He thinks he likes this, as he moves around the produce section. Having Isabel on him like this. He’s always liked holding her, cradling her against him, but this is nice. Being able to feel her breathe as he goes about his day, being able to feel her squirm and settle. She’s a warm, soothing weight against his chest, fist curled next to her face. She feels steady and secure. Richie feels safe, knowing she’s safe with him. 

“Oh, look at you,” says a lady by the apple bin almost immediately. 

“Huh?” Richie says, turning carefully so he doesn’t jostle the baby. 

The lady, who must be at least sixty, points at him with a smile. “Aren’t you just darling,” she says. “My husband was always so good with the little ones, too.”

“Oh,” Richie says, and flushes. “Um, thanks.”

“Her mom must be grateful for the help,” the lady says knowingly. 

Richie chuckles a little. “You have no idea.”

He barely gets five steps farther before another woman, this one maybe forty and dragging a preschooler behind her, stops and says, “Oh, she is _precious._ How old is she?”

Richie blinks. “Um, just over a week.”

“What a sweetheart,” the woman says, clutching her chest. She looks at Richie and says, “And you, too.”

Richie laughs awkwardly and keeps pushing his cart. 

He spends the entire shopping trip being assaulted by women cooing over Isabel and, almost equally as much, cooing over _him._ He knows he must look ridiculously domestic like this, doing the grocery shopping on a Monday afternoon with a baby on his chest, but the ladies are just _losing it._ They all want to look at her, and sigh, and tell him he’s doing an amazing job, and ask her name and if she’s his daughter. 

“Er, no,” he says. “But she is my baby.”

He doesn’t know why he says that. He knows he could just lie. 

But it feels good. To call her his baby. 

“You’re doing such a good job,” the lady at the cash register says as she scans his things. “My husband never took ours out alone. Too nervous they’d need me, I guess. But she looks right at home with you.”

It makes Richie’s eyes sting a little, and he just smiles tightly and pulls out his card. He likes that word: _home._ If he can be that, then he thinks he’s doing alright.

***

Eddie doesn’t actually fight people on Twitter on Richie’s behalf, but only because he thinks it’d be a little too obvious, him trying to defend Richie’s honour like a pathetic gay suitor. But he _does_ spend too much of his lunch break scrolling through replies and fuming at people’s fucking stupid and wrong opinions about Richie and occasionally reporting people for being dicks for no reason.

And this is, of course, why he immediately sees when some random girl tweets, _Hey, is this that comedian Richie Tozier?? I just saw him walking down the street with a bunch of groceries AND A BABY??? Am I crazy?_

Eddie almost doesn’t want to look at the picture, but he does, and _oh._ It completely takes him the fuck out. It was obviously taken from across the street somewhere in Stan’s neighbourhood, but phone cameras are fucking good these days—it’s clear as fucking day that it’s him. He has his phone in one hand and what looks like four bags of groceries in the other, bicep straining against the sleeve of his t-shirt, shoulders a fucking mile wide, curls falling across his forehead in a tousled mess. The sun is spilling over him, lighting up the edges of his hair and shoulders, framing him in gold. And he’s looking down at the little head poking out of the top of one of those kangaroo baby carriers, beaming like he couldn’t be happier. 

Eddie groans, tips his head back in his office chair to stare up at the ceiling. He counts to ten. He looks again, and then has to hit his forehead gently against the edge of his desk. 

It’s fine, though. It’s totally fine. He can handle this. 

He saves and deletes the photo three times. He has a problem. 

It does make him feel like a fucking dick, though. That he said something so thoughtless and cruel to Richie, less than an hour ago, and is now faced with _this,_ just. Clear evidence that he couldn’t have been more wrong. And he knew he was wrong, he never thought Richie was anything other than perfectly capable, but this really just punches him in the gut, which is what Eddie _deserves._ Because Richie _isn’t_ the person everyone thinks he is. He’s _competent._ He’s _trustworthy._ He’s fucking _everything._

It’s right around then that Eddie’s lunch break ends, and he has to actually at least pretend to do work for a little while, despite the fact that his mind is a hundred miles away. It takes another half hour before he can discreetly check Twitter again, and he’s not at all surprised to see that the photo of Richie and Isabel has blown up. An account with a large following had retweeted it with the caption _HOLY FUCK HE WASN’T KIDDING???_

The internet is subsequently losing its mind. Eddie can’t necessarily blame it. 

As it turns out, though, Eddie is _not_ the only Loser currently so pathetic that he spends all his time in the #richietozier hashtag on Twitter. Maybe twenty minutes later, he gets a notification from the group chat. 

_**Patty**  
Guys_ 😭😭 _did Richie just take my daughter shopping with him_

Eddie forgot that Patty’s no longer in critical care, and now spends most of her time mind-numbingly bored in her hospital bed. 

She links a tweet a second later, and it’s not the original one that Eddie saw, but it’s the same picture, zoomed in a little and maybe sharpened. The reply beneath it is even more zoomed in, specifically on Richie’s face, his warm expression, his bright eyes. The reply beneath that one is specifically zoomed in on Richie’s bulging bicep and veiny forearm, holding up all his groceries. Eddie pretends he cannot relate. 

He texts Patty back to say, _I think your daughter is about to become an internet celebrity._

 _ **Patty**  
Good! That’s what she deserves  
Look at them though_ 😭😭😭  
_I can’t stop crying_ 😭😭😭😭  
_Tell Richie to come visit me ASAP!!!_

Eddie smiles a little, checks to make sure the person in the next cubicle isn’t watching him, and responds, _Sorry I can’t ever come…_

_**Patty**  
Oh don’t worry about it honey. All I do is sleep anyway. AND CRY OVER THIS PICTURE. _

Eddie huffs a laugh and almost texts back _“same,”_ before remembering they’re still in the group chat and not only would Richie probably see it, but Eddie would have to see it, in words. And he is not ready for that yet. Instead, he just says, _Text me whenever you’re bored, Pat, I’d gladly get fired for your sake._

Patty sends him fifteen hearts, and then Eddie gets back to work, because he’d rather not get fired _today._

For the next few days, everything is very normal—or, well, for the new value of _normal._ Eddie works, Eddie visits Richie and Stan and Isabel at least every other day to putter around making food and disinfecting things, Eddie sends Patty pictures of her daughter and her husband and her daughter’s temporary second father to keep her sane, Eddie looks at those same photos late at night and wonders if he might be losing his mind. Eddie avoids looking too closely at his own thoughts and feelings as if it’s life or death. Sometimes he feels like it is. 

And then Eddie trawls Twitter, because he’s disturbed and masochistic and also probably other reasons he doesn’t want to examine. 

This is why he does not miss the photo that crops up on the Friday following the photo of Richie returning from the store, and this one appears in the late afternoon, and it’s of Richie _and_ Stan, and Stan is pushing a stroller down the sidewalk, and Richie’s arm is hooked around Stan’s shoulders, and they’re both laughing. 

It’s a nice picture. Cute. You can’t see Isabel, but the whole scene is very domestic. 

Stan’s wedding ring is also very visible, where his fingers are wrapped around the stroller handle. As many, many zoomed-in photos are quick to advertise, with huge all-caps captions. 

_HOLY FUCK!!!!!_ says one fan. _IS RICHIE TOZIER FUCKING MARRIED????_

In the beginning, after the first photo started circulating—which Richie found hilarious—he was very quiet on the matter. He didn’t confirm or deny anything, didn’t reply to any mentions, just let people think whatever they wanted. The theories were all over the place. A lot of people had guessed the baby was from a one night stand with a woman before he came out as gay, which didn’t even make sense with the timeline of things, but whatever, Eddie doesn’t expect people on the internet to know how to do math. Other people suspected it was the baby of some poor lesbian Richie was acting as a beard for. A few people claimed, bizarrely, that Richie had only come out as gay to stir the pot or to cover up for something, and was secretly still seeing women, which was...honestly just ridiculous. Most people seemed to assume the baby had been a mistake, somehow. Richie never corrected them. 

But now there is this photo, of Richie out and about with his baby and another man who wears a wedding ring, and everyone is once again losing it. _Oh to be Richie Tozier’s husband on a walk with our baby,_ is the general consensus. That, and _Holy shit, Richie Tozier’s husband is HOT._

Eddie is, inexplicably, very grumpy about it. He does not like to see it. He bans himself from Twitter for the rest of the day. It’s completely fucking stupid, because he knows, he _knows_ what is going on. It’s not like...this is some mystery man and baby and he thinks Richie might have been hiding a secret family from him or something. Eddie is fully aware of the situation. He is looped in. So it doesn’t make sense that every time he sees or thinks about that picture of Richie and Stan with everyone commenting on it about Richie Tozier’s hot husband and cute family, Eddie is filled with stupid, pointless ire. 

He gets a notification on his phone that Richie has tweeted something. He checks it eagerly. 

All it says is _Stan wishes he could tie this down_ 😏, over a link to the original tweet. 

Eddie takes several deep breaths and works on convincing himself this feeling is something very, very far away from jealousy. 

Meanwhile, the Losers are having an absolutely field day in the group chat. Everyone seems to find the entire thing hilarious. Even Patty is in on it, saying things like, _Why yes, that is my daughter, my husband, and my husband’s husband._ Eddie doesn’t say anything, because he’s an absolute piece of shit. 

Until, of course, Bill links a tweet that says, _Aww, what happened to this poor bastard?_ And with it is a picture of Richie and Eddie getting lunch together a couple months ago. 

The photo circulated amongst Richie’s fans back then, for maybe a week, and everyone was speculating about whether or not _Eddie_ was Richie’s new secret boyfriend. Richie hadn’t denied that, either, back then. Eddie furiously does not examine what it means that he had been very pointedly _not_ pissed off about that. Now, he feels very pathetic about the whole thing. As if— As if he _was_ Richie’s secret boyfriend, but was dropped for Stanley Uris and the world’s cutest baby. 

GOD, Eddie is so fucked. He’s so fucked. 

No, no, everything is fine. It’s fine. He’s just— He just has a lot of emotions, and. He’s getting some wires crossed, or. Something. Because if Eddie admits that he’s fucked, then he has to face some other very uncomfortable truths, and he’s not ready for that yet. He is one million miles away from ready for that. He thinks he might never be ready for that. 

The next day, Eddie goes to Stan’s in the morning with the intention of staying all day, as he usually does on Saturdays. It’s a moot point that he texted Richie beforehand and was told that Stan is already gone to see Patty for a few hours. That has nothing to do with anything. 

He likes helping Richie out with the baby. Eddie is absolute shit at anything that requires actual _contact_ with Isabel, because he’s still kind of terrified of holding her and feels extremely awkward about even touching her, but he’s good at baby-adjacent things. He’s good with things that are finicky and require high levels of sanitation and repetitive tasks. And he likes knowing that he’s being useful, that he’s making things easier on Richie and on Stan’s family. And he likes puttering around the house while Richie hums songs to Isabel and talks to her like she’s an adult and rocks her to sleep and congratulates her on burping. 

“Hear me out, Belly, I’m not saying she _didn’t_ know my name, but it was all very suspicious. Why did she say it like that? Yeah, no, you’re right. She was acting weird. No, I agree! My point is, we’re enemies now, and nothing can change that. Don’t give me that look. It’s done. I’m already committed. Listen, when you grow up and develop workplace rivals just to feel something, you’ll understand. Trust me!”

Eddie smiles from where he’s swiffering the kitchen and feels warm. 

“Hey,” Richie calls, after leaning down to press six kisses to Isabel’s dark hair. “Eddie Swaghetti—”

“I will _never_ respond to that name, Richie, so help me god. I’d die first.”

“Listen to him,” Richie tuts. “Don’t take after your third dad, Belly Baby, he’s the worst.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie groans, biting back a grin. 

“I want you to grow up exactly like Stan,” Richie continues. “I can already tell you’re a little old man in a sweater vest, but in a baby’s body, so you’re right on track. I want your first word to be _stop,_ which I assume was Stan’s first word. It was definitely the first word he said to _me.”_

“Why do you want her to grow up like Stan?” Eddie asks. 

“Because Stan’s the best,” Richie says, no hesitation. 

Eddie turns away quickly, so that Richie doesn’t see his stupid fucking frown as his gut clenches. 

It’s just— It’s just. Richie is Eddie’s best friend, full stop. There’s no one else. He obviously loves all the other Losers and he talks to all of them, has a different and special relationship with all of them. He and Bev have gotten really close and his friendship with Bill is really strong and he loves Ben and Mike and now Patty and he _does_ love Stan too, of course he loves Stan, Eddie would kill a man if he thought Stan needed him to. But Richie is— Richie is something else. And of course there’s probably a word for how he feels about Richie that he’s not going to name but that’s not the point. The point is that Richie is Eddie’s best friend, and. Sometimes Eddie wonders if he’s Richie’s best friend. 

Which is stupid and selfish and god, _god,_ he’s so pathetic, but sometimes Eddie just wants to fucking be _it_ for someone. And he has so many fucking issues wrapped up in that but that doesn’t change that he just. He wishes someone would choose...him. In a good way, for once. Just one fucking time. 

And this is not a new problem and this is not a new thought and it’s not fair for him to be thinking like this right now when the situation is so clearly not normal and that’s why Eddie’s not allowed to name any of his feelings, because he’s a shitty person who doesn’t know how to have them. He’s not allowed to have them. 

He takes a deep breath. Pretends to be very concerned with a sticky spot on the floor. Tries to shake off the tightness in his chest. 

And then the front door swings open, and in walks Stan, and for a second, Eddie feels like telling him to fuck off. 

But then he sees Stan’s face, and Eddie snaps his mouth shut. 

“Richie,” Stan says, voice hoarse, and he looks like _shit._ He looks like absolute shit. He’s looked like shit this whole time, ever since Patty went to the hospital, but right now he looks like someone ran over him with a truck and then dragged him down the road behind it, emotionally. The bags under his eyes look like bruises. There are lines in his face that Eddie knows weren’t there a month ago. His hair needs, desperately, to be washed. 

“Hey, Stan,” Richie says, and his voice is so fucking gentle. “You okay?”

 _“No,”_ Stan says, and drops his things to stumble across the floor and crumple on top of Richie on the couch, half in his lap. “Rich, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t. I can’t do it.”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, man. What’s wrong?” Richie nudges his face against the side of Stan’s head, where it’s buried in his shoulder, and then says, “Eddie?”

Eddie jolts, looks at him. Richie looks pointedly down at Isabel in his arms, who’s very close to getting crushed by her father. Eddie makes a small noise and rushes over, dropping the mop so that he can pluck Isabel clumsily from his arms. She squirms and whimpers, but he manages to keep the bottle in her mouth, which she continues sucking on greedily, completely unaware. Eddie has never fed a baby in his life, but he watched Richie teach Ben how to do it, so he’s just going to have to fucking learn, _right now._

“I’m so tired,” Stan says, muffled into Richie’s t-shirt. “I’m so… _fucking_ tired. I haven’t slept in weeks. My wife’s in the hospital. I have a newborn baby. I need to work to pay for the fucking hospital bills. And then I have to go visit my wife because she’s alone and she wants her baby but all she can have is me. And then I have to come home and take care of my baby and stay up all night because she needs me to _survive_ and I can’t make you do it because you already watched her all day and I need to spend time with her because she’s my _daughter_ and I love her so much but I never sleep and then in the morning I have to do it all over again, every single day, and I can’t. I can’t do it anymore. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Richie says, stroking through his disgusting hair. “It’s okay. I know it feels like that right now but if you just go take a nap everything will feel better. Patty will be home soon and Belly’s fine with me and everything will start getting better soon.”

“I can’t take a fucking nap, Richie, you’ve had her _all week.”_

“Yeah, because I want to. Look, Eddie’s got her right now, everything’s fine.”

Eddie does not feel fine, shaking a little and trying to make sure he doesn’t somehow suffocate the baby in his arms or drop her or squeeze her too tight. But he smiles a little bit, because that’s what he’s supposed to do right now.

Not that Stan is looking at him, currently trying to suffocate _himself_ in Richie’s shoulder. “I think I have postpartum depression,” he says, and his breath hitches obviously. 

“You have regular depression,” Richie says, now stroking up and down his back soothingly. “And you have sleep deprivation, and a fucking lot of stress, and it’s getting to you after two very long weeks, understandably so. And there’s not much we can do about some of those things, except remember to take our medication, and let our friends help us, and go take a nap when your best friend Richie tells you to.”

Eddie’s knees wobble a little. He sits down quickly on the other couch, checks on Isabel to make sure she’s still eating contentedly. She’s tiny and fragile and warm in his arms, and Eddie thinks he would do absolutely anything for her, and for this family. 

Stan sniffs, and clutches at the front of Richie’s shirt. “I don’t know what to do.”

“How about you go take a bath first?” Richie says. “Because you’re kind of gross, and it’ll help you relax. Belly’s eating, and then she’ll want to take a nap. So you go take a nice hot bath, and then you take a nap of your own, and then I guarantee you will feel more like a human again. And everything will seem a lot more okay, and if it doesn’t, then we’ll figure out the next best course of action, alright?”

“Yeah,” Stan says pathetically. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Richie says, and helps him stand up, and herds him towards the master bathroom. 

Eddie sits in the living room in silence while the bath starts in the background, and stares down at the baby eating in his lap. Isabel stares up at him with wide eyes, like all of this is his fault. 

And then Richie comes back, and he collapses on the couch next to _Eddie,_ and leans into his shoulder, and deflates. “Oh, god,” he moans. “Do you think I did okay? I had no fucking idea what to do.”

“What?” Eddie says, blinking in shock. “Of course you— You did perfect.”

“Really?” Richie sighs and burrows into Eddie’s side, reaching around to tickle Isabel’s foot. He sinks into Eddie, like he’s drawing comfort from _him,_ the same way Stan was just a minute ago. 

_“Yeah,”_ Eddie says, with feeling. “Rich, you’re. You’re doing everything exactly right.”

Richie swallows hard, and breathes a slow, warm breath against Eddie’s arm. Eddie thinks _Richie_ might be trembling, too. “Thanks,” he says quietly, and doesn’t pull away. “Thanks, Eds. Sometimes I think you’re the only thing keeping me sane.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, without meaning to. 

Because sure, he texts and calls Richie a lot. And he stops by more often than the others do, because he has the time and because he likes to make himself useful. And he’s noticed, offhand, that Eddie seems to be the first person Richie calls in a crisis, or to share news, or to send videos of Isabel with the hiccups. But he—he never thought about the fact that Richie might need that from him more than he might say. He never thought about the fact that he might be Richie’s main support through this. Eddie thought he was just kind of...here. 

And he feels fucking stupid, now, for holding _any_ kind of grudge against Stan. Because this fucking _sucks_ for him, this is all so terrible for him, so _fucking_ hard for him, and Eddie was acting like a child, desperate for Richie’s attention. He’s a moron, and he’s selfish, and he’s— Richie is just doing everything he can to support Stan through this, because he’s a good fucking friend. 

And Eddie is too, he _is_ , but he’s not as good at it. He’s too good at forgetting. But this was a good reminder. He won’t forget again. 

“You’re doing everything right,” he says again, and to himself, he changes it to, _you will do everything right from now on._ “You’re the best.”

He feels Richie smile against him. It makes Eddie’s stomach flip dangerously. 

Fuck his stupid, irrational jealousy. This is what he’s supposed to be doing. In the circumstances, this is exactly how things should be. 

Except about the secret husband thing. Eddie’s still allowed to be a little bit cranky about that. Nobody’s perfect.


	5. Chapter 5

On Sunday morning, right after Richie has woken up with Isabel and fed her and burped her changed her and then gotten her back down for her first nap of the day, Stan stands in front of him and puts his hands on Richie’s shoulders and says, “Richie.”

Richie doesn’t like the way he says that. “What,” he hedges. 

“Bill and Audra are coming over at noon,” Stan says. “And Bev and Ben are stopping by for supper.”

Richie nods seriously, bracing himself for bad news. _He’s getting everyone together to tell them something,_ he thinks. _Something’s happened with Patty._

But then Stan just says, “You have the day off.”

Richie blinks. “Huh?”

“I have enough help today,” Stan says. “Patty’s going to be coming home tomorrow so I’ll be taking a sick day, so you can even sleep at home if you want. But regardless, for at _least_ the next twelve hours you are completely free of your duties. I want you to take a day off.”

“Oh.” Richie looks over at Isabel sleeping in the bassinet in the living room. Her tiny chest rises and falls. “Yeah, uh. Okay.”

“Okay?” Stan’s eyebrows lift a little in surprise. 

“Yeah, I.” Richie frowns, searches his heart for how he feels about this. Mostly he just feels tired. Very, very tired. “That’s probably a good idea. You know, to go out and do non-baby things sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Stan agrees, but suspiciously, like he doesn’t believe him. 

Richie laughs a little. “No, seriously. I. I mean, I’ve been here all day every day all week. I think I’m ready for a day off? Maybe?”

“Good,” Stan says slowly. “So you are human after all.”

Richie laughs again, shakes his head. “But you have to let me say goodbye to Belly first.”

“I’m not going to kick you out right this exact second, Rich,” Stan says, and rolls his eyes. 

Isabel is still sleeping soundly by the time Richie collects the things he needs to bring home and goes to say his goodbyes. She’s hiccupping in her sleep, and it makes Richie smile as he picks her up gently. 

“See you later, Belly Baby. You be good for your dad and your other aunties and uncles,” he says softly, brushing his lips over her forehead. “Not too much crying, you hear me? No starting to like anyone more than me. No learning to roll over or say your first word or anything.”

“She’s not even a month old,” Stan says flatly. 

Richie ignores him. “Drink lots of milk and sleep nicely, just like we talked about. Have nice dreams about overthrowing the government and eating the rich. Don’t forget that Uncle Richie loves you lots and lots and lots and lots.” He kisses her forehead again, and then her tiny nose, and her round little cheek, and then her other cheek, and her forehead a third time. She makes a face in her sleep, so he kisses her little palms instead. Sometimes Richie thinks he’ll never be able to stop giving her kisses. 

He kind of expects Stan to sigh and tell him that’s enough, but he doesn’t. Richie appreciates that. He finally manages to tear himself away, and put her back down to bed. When he turns around, Stan is putting his phone away suspiciously. Richie doesn’t complain. He takes videos of Stan with Isabel all the time to send Patty in the hospital. And just to keep for himself. They’re nice. 

He convinces himself to leave five minutes later, after giving Isabel at least four more kisses in her bassinet. He thinks that’s fair, because he’ll be gone a long time. And then he says bye to Stan, and triple-checks that he’ll be okay on his own for the two hours until Bill and Audra come over, and finally walks out the door, with only minor difficulty. 

The sun is blindingly bright in his face. This doesn’t make sense, because it’s not like he’s become a hermit. He and Stan go outside with Isabel sometimes, or he goes out on his own while Stan is watching her to get things from the store or pick up takeout for them. But there’s still something about this that feels like stepping out from an underground bunker for the first time in months. The weather is gorgeous, sunny and warm with a nice breeze, and Richie breathes it in slowly. He gets into his car and rolls down the windows. 

He still feels strangely numb about everything. Isabel had a bit of a rough night, up constantly and needing her diaper changed and fussing loudly, and although Stan generally takes care of her overnight, Richie was always waking up just from hearing her. So he’s tired, and his brain feels foggy. But there’s not that undercurrent of anxiety he’s gotten used to, that feeling like he should be there, with her, at all times. Stan’s been feeling better since yesterday’s bath and nap, and Richie feels like he has this under control, and he knows he’ll have the other Losers there for him and for Isabel. He feels good, knowing Bill will be there, with his steady, comforting presence, and Audra with her soft smiles and gentle hands, and Bev with her fiercely warm hugs, and Ben who is everything good and kind and strong. And Richie wants to see them, too, but he knows he should get out a little. Go home. Rest. So that he can go back tomorrow and be ready for the coming week. 

So he does. He drives home, and throws some shirts into the laundry basket and one particularly revolting one straight into the trash, and then gets a few new ones to pack up for when he returns, and then he kicks off his sweats and climbs into his own bed. The house is very, very quiet. He doesn’t really like it. He misses the sound of Isabel making little sounds in her sleep or her white noise machine or Stan walking around in another room. But he doesn’t think about that right now. 

He passes the fuck out. 

Three hours later, for the first time in weeks, Richie wakes up slowly. Nothing jars him into consciousness with a wailing cry or a slammed cabinet door. He just...wakes up. He shakes off some strange, half-formed dreams. He stretches out heavy, stiff limbs. He wipes drool off his face. He lazes a bit, just lying there under the covers, warm and comfortable and sleepy but no longer head-poundingly tired. He hasn’t gotten any emergency calls or texts—he never has his phone on silent anymore. It’s past noon now, so Bill and Audra will be there. He is, for once in his life, not achingly worried about everything. 

Instead, he is just. So _fucking_ bored. Richie has lived alone for many, many, many years. And of course that doesn’t mean he has never been in his house by himself and felt so bored and alone that he thought he could die from it, but it’s been a while. Since Derry, and getting his friends back, and making the move to be close to them, things have been different. He’s felt more whole than he ever has. And Richie doesn’t necessarily hate the quiet, or being alone. Not in and of itself. 

But maybe he does, and he just convinced himself that he didn’t, for a while. Maybe he just convinced himself he was okay with the way things were, as part of his overall effort to convince himself he didn’t need more. Maybe this hollow ache in his chest has been there all along, and he’s been ignoring it, and he has, he knows he has, but fuck, he was getting so _good_ at it. And now he’s spent a couple measly weeks surrounded by people, even if half the time it was just a baby, and that’s all been shot to hell. Fuck. 

The point is, Richie is alone, and he’s fucking _bored._ There’s no baby to check on or feed or rock to sleep. No unbelievably tense new father to feed or comfort or talk down from a ledge. No bottles to prepare or tiny socks to fold or endless, endless laundry to do. And Richie knows he should probably talk to his agent, send him some of his new material, talk about the future of his shows and when he’ll be ready to return to the stage, projects he might be able to handle from home in the meantime, but he just. Doesn’t want to. He’s bored out of his mind and there are things he should do but instead he just lies in his bed, and feels sorry for himself, and takes a really long time to jack off for the first time in weeks even though it’s kind of disappointing. 

In all honesty, it just makes him feel even lonelier and more pitiful. When you’re taking care of a baby it’s easy to pretend that’s why you’re not getting laid, ignoring the very long stretch of time before that. Now, in the quiet, uncomfortable aftermath of something that was supposed to be _fun,_ it’s a lot harder to avoid the hard truth. 

Richie sighs, drags himself out of bed. Takes a shower. Changes into clean clothes. Lies back down. Gets up. Eats some slightly-stale crackers with cheese that’ll probably go moldy soon. Eats some dry cereal because all of his milk went bad. A clock ticks somewhere in his house. It’s too big. The house is too big. He’s just one person and he almost never has people over and he wishes he had a roommate or something. A cat, maybe. He should get a cat. 

“You don’t need a cat,” he tells himself, out loud, like he’s losing his mind. “You already have a baby.”

He slouches on his couch that no one else ever sits on and picks up his phone to flick through his camera roll. 

There are dozens of pictures of Isabel. Richie’s been taking more photos in the past few weeks than he has in literally his entire life. Pictures of Isabel sleeping, of her on her tummy on the floor, of her wide eyes and her tufts of dark hair after a bath and her tiny hand against the palm of Richie’s and her little foot and the milk-drunk look on her face while she eats and the tiny half-smile on her face as she drifts off in his arms. Isabel in the bath and in her bassinet and in her car seat and in Stan’s arms, on Stan’s chest. Wearing little hats and tiny boots and cute onesies and sometimes in just her diaper. 

Richie smiles, and rubs his thumb over the curve of her cheek in each picture, and misses the warmth of her in his arms, the baby smell of her, the sounds she makes. He misses the velvet-soft feeling of her baby-smooth skin against his lips. 

And then he flips to the next photo, and it’s Eddie, on his knees next to her bassinet in the living room, peering into it, one hand on her round little stomach, eyebrows pinched in concern but eyes so warm it completely just punches Richie straight in the gut. 

He has to physically put his phone down, bowled over with emotion. God, he just. FUCK. 

To be honest, this entire thing with the baby has completely ruined Richie. He’s been working hard on folding up his feelings into little manageable pockets and tucking them away and closing the lid on them, and he’s been getting good at it. But now with the baby and everything, the enormity of how much he feels for her and just, how much he _feels,_ point blank, all of that has gone to shit. And until now he has been pretty distracted by the baby at hand but now he is alone at home and his emotions are spilling fucking _everywhere_ and it’s a _mess._

He just. Fuck. He just loves this man. Richie’s looking at the photo again before he’s even aware of it. The soft slope of his shoulders, the cut of his jaw, the curve of his mouth that Richie’s had memorized since he was a kid with skinned knees and a heart too big for his chest. Richie had taken it quickly, almost in a panic, as proof that Eddie had, indeed, touched Isabel on purpose. But he’s so fucking beautiful, in his jeans and his t-shirt that stretches across his shoulders, his face a painfully familiar combination of anxiety and affection. Richie loves, loves, loves him. 

And Richie’s been cherishing his time raising a little family with Stan, he really has, but it’s different, with Eddie. Everything is always different. And he knows that, has known that, has maybe always known it. But usually Richie has a handle on it and has long since come to terms with the fact that nothing will ever come of it and he’s okay with that. It just something he lives with, tucked away in his chest, warm and a little painful but his. It’s a secret but it doesn’t feel dirty. He’s okay with loving Eddie Kaspbrak, sometimes thinks that he was _made_ to love Eddie Kaspbrak. It’s a part of being alive, along with the fact that he will never tell him. And he’s okay with it. 

Or at least he _was,_ but. Fuck. Now he got a glimpse into…living with Eddie. Being with Eddie. Being a family, with him. And Richie isn’t sure he ever wants kids of his own, isn’t sure if that’s what this means, but he feels like. He wants...a family. This thing with Isabel is wonderful and he loves to be home for someone right now, but he knows it won’t be like this forever. He wants something that’s forever. 

And he wants Eddie to be part of it. And it sucks, is all. 

Richie groans, loud and long. Maybe he’s just fucking...lonely. He’s probably just lonely, and that’s why everything feels so sad and pathetic and impossible right now. This is Stan’s fault for forcing him to spend time alone with his thoughts. Richie should never, under any circumstances, be allowed to spend time alone with his thoughts. 

For a minute, he thinks about asking Eddie if he wants to hang out. He thinks, tentatively, that maybe it would help to see him, help for Richie to get his head back on straight. Plus, it’s not like they’ve been able to spend any quality time together recently. And Richie misses him, even though he just saw him yesterday. Misses him almost all the time, honestly. Has spent the majority of his life missing him. 

But it’s probably a bad idea. He’s emotionally compromised, or whatever the fuck. Who knows what kinds of pathetic nonsense will well up inside of him in this state. And he doesn’t want to bother Eddie, anyway, and burden him with Richie’s neediness. Eddie needs a day off, too. From _him._

As if on cue, his phone buzzes in his hand, and he flips it over to see a group chat notification. He opens it, and sees Eddie saying, _Hey, what’s today’s baby situation? Should I come over at some point, maybe with some groceries?_

Richie crams his feelings back down his throat quickly and chews his lip over whether or not he should reply on Stan’s behalf, considering he is...not technically an authority on this topic. But in the end, Stan beats him to it.

_**Stan**  
No  
People are over today, thanks though Eds  
It’s Richie’s day off so he’s probably dying at home  
Take him out for a walk_

Richie coughs out a laugh and types out _HEY!!,_ but a split second later he gets a separate text from Eddie that just says, _Hey, I hear you’re at home. You wanna go to the park?_

And fuck Richie, but he does. He really does want to go to the park. Like a fucking dog. 

He’s also weak as fuck, especially where Eddie is concerned. He pretends that he wasn’t just thinking about how he shouldn’t bother Eddie literally five minutes ago and begrudgingly types out a _YES…_ in response. 

An hour later Richie is sitting on a park bench just off the parking lot, watching a mom run around with her two kids and their yappy terrier, watching them laugh, thinking _I wonder where their dad is,_ thinking _he should be here right now,_ thinking _he shouldn’t be missing this._

Before he can fully unpack how ridiculous that is—the man might not even exist, for god’s sake—there’s a tap on his shoulder, and Richie whips around to see an ice cream cone inches away from his face. 

Eddie is standing behind it, grinning. “I got you this,” he says, warm, like he’s happy to see Richie. 

Richie is the luckiest motherfucker to ever live. “Thanks,” he says, maybe a little breathlessly, plucking the cone from his hand. Eddie has his own, chocolate, and he licks melting ice cream from his knuckles. Richie quickly averts his gaze. 

They walk a little, through the paths and under trees, and Richie admires the way the sunlight streams through the leaves and dapples across Eddie’s skin and hair. They walk close together, close enough that when someone goes by on a bike Eddie steps in a little and their swinging hands brush together. It goes through Richie’s arm like electricity, and his hand flexes with the need to reach out, to grab hold. He’s hyperaware of how close Eddie is to him, and it’s terrible, and wonderful. Richie’s too old to be crushing on someone like this, but he missed out on it for almost thirty years, so he thinks it should be allowed. Just a little. As a treat. Maybe a curse.

They settle into a pair of swings near the river and sway back and forth slowly, side by side, and the weather is beautiful and Eddie is smiling and his mouth and hands are sticky and Richie just loves the absolute fuck out of him. 

“So,” Eddie says, and Richie honestly couldn’t say if he’s breaking a silence or if they’ve been talking this whole time. “Patty’s coming home tomorrow, huh?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, smiling. “Should be, unless anything changes.”

Eddie hums, and doesn’t look at Richie—why would he be?—and says, “Guess that means we won’t be playing temporary dads for too much longer.”

And Richie knew that, knew it would eventually end and has known that all along, but it still goes through his chest like a gunshot. “Yeah,” he says, and it comes out a little choked. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Eddie drags one foot against the ground as he swings and it veers him off course so that he bumps gently into Richie. Richie wants to throw himself at him, hold onto him so tightly that he never has to let go. He lets out a breath that comes out louder and more dramatic than he intended, and Eddie looks at him—Richie wishes he wouldn’t—and says, “You okay?”

Richie sniffs and avoids his gaze and says, “Yeah. I just. Miss the baby.”

Eddie hums, and Richie swallows thickly around his own lie. He does miss Isabel, a little, a nagging feeling that lingers around the edge of him whenever he’s not with her. But more than that, right now, he misses Eddie, preemptively. He misses the time he’s not going to get to spend with him, soon. The time he won’t get to watch him washing dishes or doing laundry or sweeping floors. All that domestic shit he won’t get to see because Eddie isn’t _his_ and never was and never will be. He misses all of it. 

Maybe that’s just plain fucking yearning. Richie’s good at that. 

“Hey,” Eddie says suddenly. “Remember when we used to do this all the time as kids? Go to the park like this?”

Richie nods, frowning a little. He thought that’s why they were _doing_ this. As a throwback kind of thing. Why else would Eddie take him to the park and buy him ice cream? “Yeah,” he says anyway. “Every weekend as soon as it got warm enough, right up until there was too much snow to bike through.”

Eddie laughs a little, swinging himself from side to side. “Everyone else got so sick of it, but we only went there for the ice cream.”

“There was that nice stretch of grass that you’d run across and make me time you to see if you were getting faster,” Richie says, smiling at the memory. “And I’d lie and say it was the exact same time every time. And you got so pissed off because you believed me.”

Eddie snorts. “I didn’t think I’d ever make the track team.”

“Course you would,” Richie says. “Fastest little fucker on twelve-inch legs you’d ever meet.”

Eddie kicks out at him ineffectually. “You always said you went with me to watch Lori Chamberlain practicing with the cheer squad.” He looks at him expectantly. 

Richie laughs, maybe a little too loudly. He said all sorts of shit, huh? Faked crushes on a string of girls he thought he should probably think were pretty. “Yeah.”

“So who _were_ you watching?” 

Richie looks at him in surprise, maybe a little of that old dread. That old terror that he was being too transparent. “Huh?”

“You must’ve been there for _someone,”_ Eddie says with a shrug. “It couldn’t have been _that_ fun to watch me run back and forth a hundred times and buy me ice cream with your allowance.”

 _You,_ Richie would say, if he was braver and better and more worthy. _I was watching you, I’ve always been watching you, I’d watch you for the rest of my life, I can’t tear my fucking eyes off you._ But he’s not, so he says, “A repressed homosexual never reveals all his secrets, Spaghetti Man.”

Eddie scoffs, and rolls his eyes. “You’re so obnoxious,” he says. 

“Only for you, Eddie Baby.”

“That’s such a fucking lie.”

“Okay, true, but I save the best of it for you.”

“Lucky me.”

 _No,_ Richie wants to say. _Lucky me._

But that would imply this is something he gets to keep. And Richie’s not _that_ lucky.

***

Eddie is relieved beyond belief about Patty coming home from the hospital, not only because that means she’s doing well enough to be home again, but because that means he no longer has to feel cripplingly guilty about not being able to go visit her there.

As it is, he’s at work when she finally comes home, but he goes to see her before he even goes home, with takeout in hand. 

“Eddie Kaspbrak, I am in love with you,” Patty says, the second he steps inside. She’s on the couch in pajamas, looking wan and tired but beaming at him. 

“I should have known you were having a secret phone affair while you were in the hospital,” Stan says from the kitchen, filling a glass with water. “Hey, Eds. Is that food? Never mind, I’m in love with you too. Patty, you’re forgiven.”

Eddie smiles ruefully and carries over his bags of Vietnamese food. “I thought you might like some soup, Pats,” he says. “Sorry, I should have texted first.” He looks around. “Is Richie not here?”

Stan makes a vague noise. “No, he wasn’t feeling very well, so he decided to go home in case it was a bug or something. Actually, I think he went to cry to Bill about his feelings.”

“He has feelings?” Eddie says, probably too fast. 

“Are you kidding? Richie’s 90% feelings and 10% repression.”

Eddie laughs a little, and is glad Stan didn’t realize what he actually meant, which was that Eddie thought Stan meant he had feelings… _for_ someone. It’ll happen eventually. Not that Eddie will mind, because. Well. Anyway. 

“Maybe you can put whatever you got him into the fridge and he can eat it when he comes back,” Patty says, and then reaches out her arms. “Come over here, Eds, I missed you. How are you?”

“I’m good. Hey.” He crosses the room to clasp her hand and bend over to kiss her forehead. She pats the couch, and he lifts her legs gently to sit under them, her legs draped across his lap. She reaches out to hold his hand with hers again. “How’re you settling in?”

“Ugh, it’s a thousand times better than the hospital, that’s for sure.” Patty smiles and closes her eyes. “Company’s better, for one. And I have my own bathroom.”

“You’re feeling alright?” Eddie presses. She still smells like the hospital, and it makes Eddie nauseous, but he tries to ignore it. 

Patty hums. “As alright as I was feeling in my hospital room. So, so tired. And weak. And I can’t move that much without help. And the pain can get pretty bad. And I can’t hold my own baby for very long without help.”

Eddie makes a small noise, looks around. “Where’s Isabel?”

“She’s sleeping over there,” Patty says, nodding towards the bassinet tucked close to the window so the sun shines down on it. “Or at least she was last I saw.”

“Sorry, babylove, I’ll move her closer so you can see her,” Stan says, bringing Patty a bowl of steaming soup on a tray. 

“No, it’s alright,” Patty sighs. “I want her to soak up a little sun.” 

“I think she’d rather soak up some motherly love,” Stan says gently, settling the tray on her lap before moving away to pull Isabel’s bassinet closer. She looks tiny and peaceful and serene, and Eddie watches the way Patty’s entire face pinches with love and affection and regret as she looks at her. 

“So,” Eddie says quickly, because it kills him to see her feel bad about something she had no control over. “What have you been up to to combat a million hours of invalid ennui?”

Patty snorts. “I assume you’re familiar?”

“It’s been a while, but yes. I started folding paper cranes out of comic book pages at one point in my childhood when I was on bedrest for no reason.”

Patty laughs, and they chat about the endless TV she’s been watching on her phone in the hospital, the audiobooks she’s been listening to to drown out the sound of her hospital roommates, the nurse that’s been teaching her how to crochet. Stan brings Eddie the noodles he got for himself and then sits down with his own and joins the conversation, dragging his chair closer so that he’s right next to Isabel’s bassinet and lifting his feet to wedge them into the gap between Patty’s thighs and Eddie’s hip. It’s comfortable and cozy and Eddie loves it, loves this, loves having friends who touch him and like his company and laugh with him. 

They finish eating, and then Isabel wakes up, and Eddie moves so that Stan can help Patty hold her, and feed her. Eddie’s heart swells as he watches them, this new little family who have been through absolute hell but made it through and are here, now, together. Finally. 

It makes his chest ache in a different way, too. Watching them, and standing off to the side, not quite a part of it. This is his family, but it’s not his… _family._ Eddie’s never had something like this. 

Afterwards, Patty is exhausted, and Stan helps her move into their room and lie down in bed there to rest, and Eddie starts thinking he should probably get going until Stan says, “Hey, Eds, would you mind staying here with Patty and Isabel just for a bit? I need to run to the store for more formula, I didn’t realize we were so low.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Sure, of course. No problem.”

“They should both be sleeping for a while,” Stan says with a small smile. “I’ll tell Pat I’m stepping out.”

“Alright,” Eddie says, and pretends he’s not nervous at all. 

A minute later, Stan is gone, and it’s just Eddie alone with two people who are more or less helpless without his help. It’s fine. He’ll be fine. 

And it _is_ fine, at first. Eddie washes dishes in the kitchen, close enough to Isabel’s bassinet to be able to keep an eye on her, and Patty is silent down the hall. The whole house is quiet apart from the rush of water over glass and ceramic, the clatter of dishes in the sink. 

And then Patty calls, softly, “Eddie?”

Eddie’s head snaps up. “Hm?” he says, trying not to wake the baby.

He turns off the water, and hears a sniffle. “Eds?”

Eddie wipes his hands quickly and moves down the hall, poking his head through the open door to Patty and Stan’s bedroom. “Hey, Pats, did you need me?”

Patty is lying back against a stack of pillows, rubbing red eyes. Eddie can’t tell if she’s crying or just tired, and doesn’t ask. “Can you bring me my baby?”

Eddie blinks. He bites his tongue. “Yeah,” he forces himself to say. “Yeah, Pats, of course. She’s sleeping—”

“I know,” Patty says. “I just need to hold her.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says again. “I’ll go get her for you.”

“Thank you,” Patty says with another soft sniff, and Eddie turns around and pads back to the living room on quiet feet, and then looks down at Isabel fast asleep in her bassinet and panics. 

“Okay,” he whispers to himself softly. “Okay, you can do this. You’ve held her a couple times now, so it’s all fine. Nothing to worry about. She survived both times so you can do this again.”

Isabel makes a tiny noise and clenches her fist next to her face. 

Eddie sucks in a deep breath. “Support her neck,” he tells himself. “Don’t drop her.”

It’s worse because he has so much time to overthink it. Both of the previous times Eddie held her, it was a now-or-never-but-actually-seriously-right-now situation and he just had to....man the fuck up and _do it._ But now there’s nothing rushing him other than the fact that Patty is waiting for him to bring her her baby and Eddie is standing here, frozen, thinking he’ll reach out in a second, in another second, anytime now he’ll be able to do it. He breathes. Isabel breathes back. She’s so fucking tiny. 

Maybe Stan will come home, he thinks wildly. Maybe Stan will come home in the next three seconds even though he’ll probably be gone another fifteen minutes at least. Maybe Richie will come back. Maybe Patty will be miraculously healed and be able to come get the baby herself. God, Eddie’s such a fucking wimp. 

No. No, he’s fucking not. Eddie is a goddamn fucking adult who has done a lot of things he never thought he would do in the past few years, _including_ help to kill a fucking _clown,_ so he fucking _can_ do this. He can. He can do it. 

And then he just...does. He just reaches out, and slides his hands under Isabel’s head and under her bum, and he picks her up. And he’s shocked, all over again, by how little she weighs. And she whines in her sleep and squirms, but Eddie’s already clumsily tucking her into the crook of his arm, and watching her face as he walks carefully down the hall, holding his breath. 

He makes it to Patty’s room, and looks up to see her watching him, smiling. He smiles back, and steps up next to the bed, and gently, gently settles Isabel into her mother’s lap, cradled between her thighs. 

Patty smiles, and sniffles, and touches a finger to her cheek. “Thank you,” she whispers, and touches Isabel’s tiny nose, her rosebud lips. Her eyes well up with tears. “Could you— I’m sorry— Could you help me move onto my side, maybe? I can wait until Stan gets back if—”

“No, Pats, of course,” Eddie says, and helps her move Isabel to the other side of the bed before giving her an extra hand in turning over. She doesn’t need much help, has finally begun to recover from her various surgeries and complications, but Eddie wouldn’t mind regardless, would do anything for her right now. 

Once she’s comfortably on her side, pillows tucked where they need to be, he goes around to the other side of the bed and crawls across it to scoot Isabel into the warmth of her waiting arms, and then collapses there on the bed himself, breathing out a sigh of relief that he did it, and no one got hurt, he didn’t ruin anything. 

Patty lets out a soft laugh, holding her daughter close against her chest. “Thanks, Eddie,” she says again, her voice warm and quiet, speaking close to Isabel’s head. “I mean it. I know that’s not easy for you.”

Eddie turns onto his side to face her, still fully dressed in his work clothes, and shakes his head. “No, Pats, it’s nothing,” he says quickly. 

“You shush,” Patty says with a knowing smile. “Don’t act like I don’t know you. I know it’s not easy for you to hold her.”

Eddie swallows guiltily, wonders if Richie’s told her, or Stan. That he’s scared of her, that he never wants to touch her. 

“It’s alright,” Patty says.

“I just—” Eddie starts. 

But Patty shakes her head, kisses Isabel’s forehead softly. “You don’t have to justify it, sweetie. It’s hard for you. That’s okay. It was brave of you to bring her to me. It was brave and it was good of you to do it because you knew I wanted to hold her.” 

Eddie eyes go hot, and he turns his face to press it into the pillow under his head, embarrassed and surprisingly overwhelmed. 

“Shhh,” Patty says, like he’s the baby here. “Come here. I love you.”

Eddie sniffles humiliatingly, but scoots closer to her, until he’s curved around Isabel, not quite touching her, and his knees are bumping Patty’s through the blanket. She lifts her hand from her daughter’s tiny chest to pet his hair, touch his arm. Gentle, like that’s what he deserves. 

“You’ve been really brave,” Patty tells him, and Eddie wants to fucking cry, because he always wants to fucking cry when people say that to him. 

His chest hurts. He feels like he wants to talk to Richie. It doesn’t make sense because there’s nothing more terrifying than Richie looking at him and seeing him and making Eddie feel like he’s about to fall apart but at the same time being the only thing holding him together, but still, Eddie wants to talk to Richie. 

Patty seems to read his mind. She pets his hair one more time, and then turns back to her daughter, and nuzzles into her fluff of dark hair, and murmurs, “You and Richie have both been so good to us.”

Eddie only barely chokes back the pathetic sound that tries to build in his throat. “It’s been mostly him,” he says hoarsely. “Like, 99% him.” 

“That’s not how he’s made it sound to me,” Patty hums. 

Eddie screws his traitorous eyes shut preemptively. “I’ve mostly just been...sitting around and watching him.”

“I can’t blame you,” Patty says. “He’s really something to watch, huh?”

Eddie blows out a short breath. “Yeah,” he says. “Just...he’s really. Something.”

Patty hums again, shifting slightly. Eddie cracks his eyes open to watch her stroke her hand up and down Isabel’s stomach, her tiny chest rising and falling as she sleeps. Isabel looks perfectly at ease in her mother’s embrace. It makes Eddie’s heart squeeze, but not the way it does when he sees Richie doing the same. It’s not the same. 

He swallows thickly and says, “Sometimes when I see him with her I think I’m going to lose my mind.”

Patty smiles and huffs out a laugh. “I know what you mean.”

“No, I really, just. It’s like staring into the sun. Like I can’t breathe, and. It’s physically painful, sometimes. Just seeing him.” It feels good to say it, for once. Lifts some of the weight off Eddie’s chest, even as his breaths go tight and fast. 

“I know,” Patty says again. 

“Do you?” Eddie presses, wondering if maybe it’s universal, if maybe everyone who sees Richie holding this tiny baby gets so unhinged, if maybe this doesn’t mean anything and he should stop worrying about everything it makes him feel. “Because it really, it gets to me, Pats, I mean it, sometimes I look at him and he’s just standing there rocking her or whatever and I want to fucking die.”

Patty’s eyes flick up to his, and she smiles. “I know,” she says. “I feel the same way with Stan, sometimes.”

Relief is instantly replaced with pure, blinding panic. Eddie’s throat closes up. He shakes his head, stomach filling with cold dread. “No,” he says. “It’s not the same.”

Patty looks at him gently, carefully. She says, “Maybe not quite. But I think it’s pretty close.”

Eddie keeps shaking his head, like if he does it long enough it can make this not true. But it’s all coalescing anyway, wildly, terrifyingly, in a way he’s been desperately trying to stop it from doing this whole time. For years, now. And it’s all spiralling out of his control. “It’s not,” he says helplessly. “I don’t.”

Patty is quiet, and Eddie’s eyes are closed again, hot and wet, and then he feels her touch his cheek with the same gentleness with which she touched her daughter’s, and she says, “Sweetie, it’s okay,” and then he’s _really_ crying, because apparently one baby isn’t enough. 

“It’s _not,”_ he says hoarsely, wiping at his eyes furiously, entire body shaking. “It’s not, it’s. I don’t know what to _do.”_

“You don’t have to do anything,” Patty says, wiping under his eyes with her thumb. “It’s okay.”

Eddie’s breaths hitch, and he’s fucking...crying all over the sheets, tears dripping down the side of his face. “I don’t, I can’t— I can’t, Patty.”

“You can’t what?”

“I can’t—” The word gets stuck in his throat, and he chokes on it, and then forces it out, mangled and ugly, just the way it feels. “Love him. I can’t.”

“Shhh,” Patty hushes. “Why not?”

She’s not surprised. She’s not surprised and it fucking kills him. “Be _cause,”_ he says, voice breaking. “I don’t fucking know how. I don’t know how and I’ve never before and I’m. I’m messed up and I fuck everything up and I’m probably _bad at it._ I’m probably bad at it and what if I, I love him too much? I don’t know how. Look at me, I’m a fucking disaster who doesn’t know _how.”_

“Hey,” Patty says, so much gentler than he deserves. “Hey, Eddie. Look at me.” 

Eddie can’t. He presses the side of his face into the sheets, says, “Just look at my history, Pats, I’ve never— I’ve _never,_ and I can’t, because I’ll fuck it up.”

“Eddie,” Patty says, low and serious. She strokes the side of his face gently, and then reaches for his hand and clasps it. “Please?”

Eddie takes a shuddering breath, and then cracks his eyes open, swollen and burning. 

Patty smiles at him, eyes shiny with sympathetic tears but impossibly warm. She holds onto his hand tightly. “Sweetie,” she says quietly. “I know things have been hard for you, and I know you’re still healing from those things. But take this from someone who has _only_ ever known the new you. I don’t know the old Eddie. I only know a little bit, secondhand, about the things he did and the way he acted and the things he had to go through. But the new Eddie is _good._ He is _so good,_ and he is so brave, and so strong. And I’ve seen the way he loves people. Maybe not...like that, but I’ve seen the way he cares for his friends, the ways he stands by them. I’ve seen the way he’s risked things for them. I’ve seen the way, five minutes ago, that he felt scared to do something, and he did it for me anyway, because he loves me.”

Eddie’s head pounds, and his body shakes, and his eyes keep leaking. He sucks in a terrible breath. “I don’t have many good experiences with love,” he says. 

“I know,” Patty says, stroking his knuckles with her thumb. “But I think you have more than you realize. And you were able to take those, and let them shape you. I see the way that you love people, Eds. With trust and care and respect. I’ve seen it, and it’s _good._ You can love him like that, too. You already do.”

Eddie sniffs, and his breaths slow a little. “I’m sorry,” he says pathetically, feeling like a moron. “I’m sorry, I’m a mess. I’m just.”

“Scared,” Patty says. “I know. That’s okay. We can be done talking about it.”

“It’s fucking scary,” Eddie says, voice hoarse. 

“It’s scary for everyone,” Patty says. “And it makes sense that it’s worse for you. But you’ve always been incredibly brave.”

God, _fuck,_ but that word kills Eddie every time. He screws his eyes shut again. “Don’t tell anyone,” he says miserably. 

“Of course not,” Patty says, letting go of his hand again to stroke back his hair from his forehead. And then, “I love you.”

Eddie wipes his face roughly, and presses her palm to his cheek with his damp hand. “Love you too.”

“In the best way,” Patty says, and then doesn’t say anything else, and they just lie there, and breathe, and Eddie feels hot and shaky and anxious all over, but he also feels like he’s safe, here. Like his secret is safe, and confined to this room. Like when he leaves, he’ll be able to swallow it back up, if he wants to. 

He’s not sure if he wants to. It’s been so big this entire time, and terrifying, and hidden away under layers and layers of repression. And god, it _hurt_ coming out. And he thinks it shook some things loose. And the space it left behind feels sickeningly open and raw, like the space after pulling out a tooth. 

But he thinks maybe it would hurt more to pack it back away. Like maybe it’s grown and won’t all fit back inside, not without breaking something. And he thinks maybe that space will shrink, and grow softer, with time. Maybe. Maybe, everything could be okay. 

Patty holds his hand until Stan comes home. When he walks in to see them, he doesn’t say anything about Eddie being curled up on his bed with his wife, or the wet stain under his face. He kisses Patty’s forehead, and thanks Eddie for bringing Isabel to her. He tells Eddie he can stay for a few more hours, if he likes. Or overnight, if he wants to move to the guest room. 

Eddie smiles shakily, and thinks, _Maybe._


	6. Chapter 6

Richie hadn’t thought he would like taking care of Patty _and_ the baby. 

It’s not that he doesn’t want to, or that he was suddenly looking for ways out of doing it. He was anticipating it all along, that Patty would eventually come home but would still need help. She can’t care for Isabel yet, _especially_ not on her own, and Stan can only take so much time off to care for her, too. So Richie knew it would be up to him, and he was okay with that. He loves Patty, and this whole family, and he would do anything for them. 

He just. He didn’t think he’d _like_ it. Of course, he hadn’t thought he’d like taking care of a baby, either, but he hadn’t really had much time to think about that before he was doing it. But taking care of an adult invalid is something different. He loves Patty dearly, but adults aren’t quite so cute, and sweet, and precious. They’ll notice and remember when you fuck up. They’ll have opinions that they may or may not share with you about how they’d like to be cared for. You can’t solve most of their problems just by holding them and rocking them. 

Richie’s never really cared for anyone, before. He always wanted to, as kids, when Eddie was “sick” and when he was...actually sick. But he was never allowed, so he never learned how. He’s never been someone who watches over hungover roommates or people puking in the bathrooms at parties. He’s never been the caring _type._ All of his experience, currently, is with one singular baby for three weeks. And he thinks he might be doing okay! No one has come to arrest him for baby neglect crimes yet. And Stan hasn’t told him to leave and never come back. 

But taking care of a baby is not the _same_ as taking care of Patty, who wants to be a mother but can only do so much. 

He didn’t think he’d like it. But he does. 

Patty is all things good and sweet and lovely, and Richie already knew that, but you never know how someone’s personality is going to translate to their personality _in sickness._ But of course, Patty is wonderful. She sleeps a lot, which is good, because Richie is used to his ward sleeping a lot. And when she’s awake, she wants to be holding Isabel, so Richie fetches her and sits on the bed or the couch with Patty and helps her hold her. And when Isabel is hungry, Patty wants to feed her, so Richie gets everything ready and then sits with her and helps Patty feed her. And he spends the rest of his day doing the things he usually does, which is soothing Isabel when she fusses, making food so that no one starves, washing dishes and laundry when he has a spare minute, napping when the house is quiet. And when none of those things call his attention, he texts Eddie. 

He hasn’t seen Eddie in person since Sunday, at the park. He knows Eddie came over on Monday, while Richie was at Bill’s fervently praying that he wasn’t going to make everyone sick and otherwise being a nuisance, but he hasn’t come back since then. Which is fine—he’s allowed to be busy. But Richie misses him, like he always misses him. 

On Friday, though, late in the afternoon, he does get a little desperate, and pathetically texts Eddie to ask when he’s going to come by again. He lies and says that Patty misses him. Sue him. 

(She probably does, though. Patty and Eddie are close. Richie thinks it’s really fucking cute.) 

_Soon,_ Eddie promises. _I’ll try to come soon._

So Richie feels better after that. 

“Rich?” Patty calls from her room, snapping him out of his pathetic, pining thoughts. 

“Yes, Patricia my love?” Richie calls back, pretending to have been tidying the living room before remembering there’s no one watching him and, more importantly, no one’s going to fire him for texting on the job. 

“I think our daughter is waking up,” Patty says, and a moment later Isabel lets out a dramatic wail. 

Richie snorts, and walks down the hall to them to find Isabel red in the face with tears, and Patty reaching out to her from the bed, patting her tummy fretfully. “Don’t worry,” he says, moving closer to lift her up from her bassinet. “She wakes up like this all the time, she’s just a drama queen. Shush, Belly Baby, a little cry will work just as well, I promise.”

Patty sighs, watching him. “She’s not going to settle if I’m not standing, is she.”

Richie shrugs helplessly. “Probably not. You can try if you want?”

“No, I don’t want to make her more upset.” She picks at her blanket sadly. 

“I need to go warm up a bottle,” Richie says. “Are you sure you don’t want to hold her until I get back?”

“She’ll be happier with you, won’t she?”

Richie does his best to smile at her. “I’m not her mom.”

Patty shrugs. “She probably thinks you are.”

It pains Richie to hear it. He knows this has been hard on Patty, and that she feels useless even now. She missed the first two weeks of her baby’s life, and she still can’t do many of the things a mother would. He knows it’s going to be a process. 

He reaches out and settles Isabel, still squalling, into Patty’s lap. “She’s in transition. She’ll learn soon that no one loves her better than you.”

Patty shoots him a grateful smile, and waves him closer so that she can kiss his forehead. “Thanks, Rich,” she murmurs. 

Richie goes warm and hurries away to make the bottle. 

This is what he likes about caring for Patty. He knew it would be different, and it is, because Patty is an adult with complex thoughts and feelings and opinions. She has moods that can’t be changed with just a cuddle and a change of clothes. And Richie doesn’t always know how to handle that, usually feels like he has no idea what he’s doing, what to say or do. But sometimes he gets it right, or at least close enough. And Patty is always, _always_ grateful. And so is Isabel, Richie assumes, when he’s able to do things for her. In her simple, baby way. But Patty can reach out, and touch his hand, and look at him, and say _thank you._ She has thanked him so many times these past five days, it’s insane. 

It feels good. Richie likes knowing he helped. He likes knowing he did something to make things better. He’s not used to being someone who does things right. 

He brings Patty the bottle once it’s warm, and climbs up into the bed to sit next to her and help her feed her daughter. Isabel is still crying when he gets there, but she quiets quickly as soon as the rubber nipple is in her mouth, and then the room is silent except for the sounds of her sucking and noisy breathing, and Richie feels Patty relax against his shoulder. 

They’re both quiet while Isabel feeds, and that’s another thing Richie likes. He’s spent the majority of his life feeling like he needs to perform for people, feeling like if he doesn’t stop talking they’ll see him, and if he doesn’t make them laugh they’ll hate him. But things are different now. He’s different. And Patty is often quiet, in a way that makes Richie feel quiet, too. Stan’s like that, too, more now as an adult than as kids. But Stan’s silences invite Richie to fill them. Patty’s make him happy to stay in them, just as he is. 

Once Isabel finishes feeding, Richie helps Patty to sit her up and hold her upright with a supporting hand, and Patty pats her back, and hums softly. It makes Richie sleepy, like _he’s_ the baby, and he leans back against the headboard, lets Patty curl into his side a little. One of his other fears about caring for her was that it would be awkward, that she’d feel uncomfortable with him always around, seeing her vulnerable like this, often in various states of undress, always in her personal space. But that hasn’t been the case at all, so far. She seems to trust him implicitly, seems completely comfortable with him. Never shies away from him or asks for more space. Touches him like it’s easy. And Richie likes that. Sometimes he wants to cry from it. 

But he doesn’t want to cry in front of her, so he just helps her hold her baby, and when Isabel burps and starts to fall asleep, he scoots them all down the bed and tucks her tiny body into the crook of his arm and lets Patty settle against his side and fall asleep with her hand on Isabel’s tummy. And Richie doesn’t fall asleep because you’re not supposed to fall asleep with your baby in the bed with you, he read that somewhere and he lives by it, but he just lies there, and lets two of his favourite people sleep on him, and feels very, very grateful. 

He does doze a tiny bit, though—it’s _really_ warm, and comfortable, and lovely—but he jerks back to full alertness when he hears a door close somewhere in the house. He blinks hard, picks up his phone from the other side of the mattress. He has a text from Eddie, saying he might stop by later, but that’s too recent. It takes him a moment to realize it’s the time of the day when Stan comes back from work. 

Richie yawns, and puts his phone back down, and shifts Isabel against his side, and closes his eyes again. Both his girls slumber on, unaware. 

There’s some shuffling in the kitchen. The fridge door opens and closes. Some water running. And then footsteps down the hall, that stop in the bedroom doorway. Richie smiles, but doesn’t open his eyes. He hears Stan sigh, and then the footsteps draw closer, and the bed dips as Stan climbs into it to join them. 

Richie hums softly, shifting to accommodate him. Stan shushes him pointlessly, worming an arm under Richie’s back, reaching across him with the other hand to cover Patty’s on top of their daughter. Richie kisses the top of his head on principle, where it’s resting on his shoulder. Stan makes a disgruntled sound, and then settles, still fully dressed in his work clothes. Richie doubts he even notices. He thinks Stan was probably born in a little sweater vest. 

Stan huffs a tired breath, hooks one leg over Richie’s, and then stops moving and, presumably, passes the fuck out. 

Richie thinks this is the happiest he’s been all week. 

He forces his eyes open, after a few minutes. If he doesn’t, he knows he’ll fall asleep. He sits up a bit, trying to shake off his drowsiness, and snakes an arm around Stan when he grumbles sleepily. He listens to everyone’s quiet breathing, and smiles, chest full and warm. He has the almost painful urge to kiss everyone’s foreheads, but he’s pinned down, and he doesn’t want to bother anyone. So he just sits there, and watches over his little family, and feels the squeezing pressure of his determination to keep them together. 

After another fifteen minutes, though, he really starts to feel like he won’t be able to stay awake like this, and with all these bodies in the bed, he knows it isn’t safe for Isabel where she is. So he spends the next five minutes carefully disentangling himself from the mess of limbs, and he slides himself off the foot of the bed with Isabel safely in his arms. She fusses quietly at being moved, but doesn’t wake up, and Richie smiles in satisfaction as she quiets against his chest. Patty and Stan move closer together on the bed, both still mostly sleeping, and Richie tugs the curtains closed before moving into the living room himself. 

He’s still incredibly sleepy, though, and he doesn’t want to fall asleep with Isabel the moment he sits down. And everyone’s asleep—no one needs him right now. So he puts her down in her bassinet, makes sure she’s comfortable, and then pulls it close to the armchair. It’s a cloudy day out, but he closes the blinds around the room anyway, casts them into false twilight. The entire house is quiet, and calls Richie to sleep. He sinks into the armchair, reclines a little, reaches out so that his hand can rest over Isabel’s tiny foot, and falls asleep. 

He is pulled back out of the world’s best nap some indeterminate amount of time later to the sound of the door, once again, opening and closing. For a moment, only half-awake and groggy, he thinks it’s Stan, coming home from work. But Stan is _already_ home, which means that it’s someone else who knows the passcode to get inside. Which is...any of the Losers, technically, although Richie is pretty sure Bill will never remember the fucking 4-digit number. 

He remembers, at the edge of his drowsy conscience, Eddie texting. Eddie saying he would try to stop by. Richie settles, eyelids still glued shut with exhaustion. Eddie will let himself in, and come find him. He’s just going to...nap...for another four seconds until then. It’ll be worth it. 

The footsteps approach from the front door. Richie breathes slow and even, trying to convince himself to rouse himself to say hi, to see him, to talk to him. He wants to. But he’s so _fucking_ sleepy. And the sound of Eddie’s quiet, careful footsteps is soothing somehow. Inexplicably, Richie feels better just knowing he’s here. 

The footsteps come to a stop in front of him. Richie almost manages to open his eyes, and then doesn’t. It just doesn’t feel worth it, when everything is so very, very easy when he’s asleep. And Isabel’s asleep, and Stan and Patty are asleep, and Eddie will handle everything else. He’s probably checking on Isabel right now. 

He thinks this for about five seconds, right before he feels a warm, feather-light touch against his forehead, brushing a curl of hair back, smoothing it away from his face. The breath gets stuck in Richie’s lungs. He feels a shiver of something, excitement or pleasure or nerves, spread through his body before he suppresses it. His heart kicks against his ribs. 

The touch disappears, and then he feels it again, almost non-existent, over his eyebrow. Richie’s stomach wobbles dangerously, and something throbs in his chest, in his throat, behind his tongue. A deep, familiar want floods him, a desire that says _reach out,_ that says _touch. Touch back._

Instead, his eyes flutter open, against his will. Eddie is standing in front of him, his face a little hard to make out in the low light. But the way his eyes widen the moment he notices that Richie’s awake is _very_ apparent. He stands there, frozen, and stares at Richie. And Richie wants, and wants, and wants. But Eddie looks genuinely panicked, like he hadn’t actually meant to do that, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing here. Or like he wouldn’t have done it if he knew Richie was awake. Which Richie knows he wouldn’t. But it still sends an ache through him, different from the familiar pain of wanting him. 

It’s been a while since Eddie touched him with any sort of intent. Richie’s been surviving off of guiltily stolen contact and gentle bumps and nudges for...a long time. A really long time. It’s kind of pathetic. 

Richie swallows thickly. He forces himself to open his mouth and says, “Oh, Eds. Hey.”

His voice comes out weak and hoarse. He hopes desperately that Eddie will think it’s from sleeping, and not because one stupid touch derailed him this hard. 

Eddie’s throat bobs. He backs away a step. “Hey,” he says. “I came in and. The house was quiet.”

Richie blinks slowly, glances at Isabel to buy himself time. She’s still fast asleep. “Yeah. It’s nap time.”

“Sorry,” Eddie says, and backs up another step. “I wouldn’t have come if—”

Richie shakes his head. “No. Stay.”

Eddie looks at him, and bites his lip. “Okay,” he says, and looks away. “Just for a bit. I’m gonna go—I brought some snacks. I’ll go put them away.”

Richie can barely look at him as he moves to the table and starts pulling things out of a bag. He feels stupid, somehow, but isn’t sure where he fucked up. Richie fucks up a lot. Sometimes, he never figures out how. 

He’s not tired anymore, that’s for fucking sure. So he pulls himself upright, and checks on Isabel, and lifts her gently from her bassinet to cradle her in his lap. He probably fucks up with her a lot, too, but at least she always seems to forgive him. And she’ll never remember, when she’s older. So he likes that. Knowing that some of his sins will be lost to time. 

Eddie moves carefully around the kitchen, and Richie watches Isabel’s sleeping face and listens to him, and feels the ghost of his gentle touch on his forehead. An old hunger gnaws at him. A desperate want. He lets Isabel wrap her tiny fingers around his pinky and kisses her head, and pretends that can sate it. 

He hears Eddie knocking his knuckles anxiously against countertops and cabinet doors. A familiar tap-tap-tap-tap rhythm that has followed him since childhood. Richie wants to reach out to him, pull him in. Tuck him close to his body, like he does with Isabel, or with Stan, or with Patty. Richie wishes he could do that. Aches with how badly he wants to feel the warm press of Eddie’s weight against him. Sometimes so badly it makes him sick. 

After a few minutes, the tapping stops. Eddie comes back. Richie looks up, and finds him smiling, gentle and uncertain. “Hungry?” he says, voice soft. A lot of people don’t know that Eddie can be this soft. But Richie knows. 

He sniffs, nods. “A little. Stan will be, when he wakes up.”

“Want me to cook something?”

Richie hesitates, and then nods. Anything to keep him around a little longer. To let Richie look at him a little longer. 

It takes Eddie half an hour to throw together some kind of one-pot pasta dish. He came out of his divorce barely knowing how to feed himself, and has accumulated a repertoire of about twelve dishes that he rotates through constantly, because they’re hard to fuck up and simple enough to be worth making for one person. Richie’s been eating a lot of those meals these past three weeks, whenever Eddie comes over to help and doesn’t bring takeout. He always feels proud, watching Eddie make them. 

He always feels proud, full stop. He feels proud of Eddie for learning to live on his own, learning to prioritize himself. He feels proud of Eddie for taking his life back and trying to get better. He feels proud of all the ways Eddie has been learning, and growing, and slowing down, and figuring himself out. And he feels proud of the way Eddie’s not tapping out anxious rhtyhms against the countertops anymore, because he’s fucking brave, and strong, and as much as Richie always wants to take care of him, Eddie can also take care of himself. 

Richie loves him. 

He loves him so much that it hurts, that he feels like he’s choking on it. He watches Eddie from the living room, holds Isabel against his chest and tries desperately not to let it leak out of him. And it hurts, but he also feels so happy, sometimes, just being close to Eddie, getting to watch him like this. Getting to be in his life. He went so long without him, and it’s nice, it’s nice having him. And it’s nice, sometimes, loving him. Being lucky enough to love him. 

Stan wakes up before Eddie leaves, and wanders sleepily around the kitchen to help him finish up, and they chat quietly. And then Eddie stays to eat with them, and sits with Patty on the couch and smiles at her, and leans into her when she touches him. And Richie isn’t jealous, because he knows they’re close. But he wishes he could touch him, too. He wishes that Eddie would touch him and not shy away. 

He leaves after dinner, insisting there are things he needs to do. He squeezes Patty’s hand and bumps his shoulder against Stan’s. He touches the tip of Isabel’s nose, still in Richie’s arms, and then gives Richie a crooked smile and meets his eyes and says, “See you, Rich.”

Somehow, it just about kills him. 

“Belly,” he whispers later, when he’s alone with her again while Stan helps Patty wash her hair in the bathroom. He cuddles her close against his chest and tucks his face against the top of her head. “Belly, I have a confession for you, and you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

Isabel grumbles in her sleep. 

Richie sniffs, and doesn’t lift his head to look at her, because even here, now, with a baby, he wants to hide from it. “I love him,” he tells her, and it’s the first time he’s ever, ever said it out loud. “I love him so much. I need you to keep this a secret for me. Sometimes I think I would do anything just to kiss him one time.”

Isabel breathes softly, and listens. 

“It’s not a bad thing,” he tells her, so that she doesn’t get the wrong idea. “It’s not a bad thing that I love him. It’s just, it’s unfortunate, you know, and I can’t tell him, or anyone else. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. I definitely don’t want _him_ to feel sorry for me, and that would be, like. Best case scenario. I don’t know if he’d mind. I don’t think so. We’re ignoring the correlation between me coming out and him never touching me. That was super soon after Derry, and he never really touched me that much in the first place, and. So that’s fine. It’s just. I don’t know. I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to have to deal with that.” He strokes Isabel’s tiny palm, finds comfort in her warm, baby-soft skin. “I don’t know. It’s hard sometimes. To love someone this much. But it’s. It’s good, too. He deserves people who love him.” 

That makes his eyes burn a little, so he sniffs, blinks hard, and says, maybe a bit forcefully, “I _just_ want to hold his hand, Belly Baby. There, I said it. I know this must be very scandalous but I want to hold his hand and never let go. And I’ve been doing a really good job repressing my emotions on this subject but then _you_ came along and _unzipped me,_ and now _he_ is unzipping me, on a daily basis. So. This is all your fault, you little stinker. So thanks a lot for that.” He nuzzles against her soft cheek, to make sure she knows he doesn’t mean it. “I need to shut up. I’m just overflowing with emotions these days. I feel a lot of things, all the time. And it’s hard when I can’t tell people. So thanks for letting me vent to you about them.”

Isabel doesn’t say anything, which Richie likes in a therapist. No judgement. No advice. She just listens. 

He smiles, and kisses her temple. “This is about Eddie, by the way,” he whispers. “Don’t tell anyone. This is between me and you.” His heart rams up into his throat, and he swallows thickly. “You’re in on it, now. Richie Tozier loves Eddie Kaspbrak.”

***

Eddie is, above all else, a huge fucking wreck.

He says this, on Wednesday, to his therapist, Paula, during their weekly appointment. He sits in front of his laptop in his quiet, lonely bachelor pad, and chews on the inside of his cheek, and says, “So, we’ve established that I’m, like, a fucking wreck.”

Paula smiles at him patiently. “I wouldn’t use those words.”

Eddie laughs, maybe a little too loud. It doesn’t matter. There’s no one else here. “Okay. But we’ve established that I’m— That I like. Repress things.”

“Sure,” Paula says. “Sometimes, in the moment, that’s the only way we know how to cope with things.”

“Right,” Eddie says. “So, I’d like to be less like that. But I can't— I— The problem is that there are some issues I can’t _talk about._ Directly. Or even, like. Think about.”

Paula hums. “Why not?”

Eddie knocks his knuckles against the leg of his table, an old nervous tic. It’s a soothingly familiar rhythm. “I don’t know. As soon as I start thinking about it too much I get panicky. It’s like. I’m aware it’s there, and it’s not even like… Rationally, I know it’s not even a bad thing. But if I think about it too much my chest starts getting all tight and it’s hard to breathe.”

Paula nods. “Right. It sounds like maybe you’re having a trauma response to it.”

“That sounds right,” Eddie says. He keeps rapping his knuckles against the table. _Tap-tap-tap-tap._ “I know I can’t, you know, deal with something without thinking about it. So should I...force myself? To think about it?”

Paula looks at him carefully. “Eddie,” she says gently. “I can’t tell you what will and what won’t work for you. But I also don’t want you to make yourself feel worse and have an even stronger response to the thoughts because you’re trying to force it.”

Eddie huffs out a tired breath. “I guess that makes sense.” He feels relieved, honestly, if maybe a little disappointed. He likes when problems can be solved by just powering through them. But he also loves to avoid his problems. “So what should I do?”

“Well, first of all, feel free to talk to me about the issue in whatever way makes you comfortable,” Paula says. “If you can only talk about it indirectly for now, that’s okay. Any progress is good progress.” She waits for Eddie to nod. “Is there anything else you can tell me about it?”

Eddie chews on his lip. _Tap-tap-tap-tap._ He tries to say the words. _I’m in love with someone. I’m in love with my best friend._ But he can’t even think them without wanting to throw up. “I have some issues with, um, intimacy. I guess.” That doesn’t really encompass the issue, but it’s better than nothing, he supposes. “You— I mean, you know about. My childhood, and. My first marriage.” Paula hums and nods. “So. Yeah. It’s kind of surrounding that. It’s...something I’ve felt for a long time. But I don’t want to, and it. Yeah. It makes me really upset when I think about it, so.” He rubs his hands roughly over his face. 

“Why does it make you upset?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie sighs. “I don’t know, I— I can’t even think about it long enough to get that far.”

“Alright,” Paula says patiently. “How about this. Something you can work on in the next week is thinking about the parts of the feeling, or the thought, that don’t feel bad. Even if it’s just things on the fringe of it, or adjacent to it. And maybe that can help you whittle down the feeling to the part that upsets you.”

Eddie feels weirdly close to crying at this point—he cries a lot during therapy, and usually doesn’t even know why, apart from the general terror of being vulnerable—so he just nods, knuckles tapping steadily. He thinks he can do that. 

So he does, the following night, in his bed in the dark. He lies there, eyes closed, and picks gingerly at the tangle of emotion that’s been living inside him as long as he can remember. It’s a mixed bag, lots of issues and fears and wants all intertwined and messy, and there’s something at the core of it that he thinks he has a name for but isn’t ready to tackle just yet. But there’s this other part of it, that he talked about with Patty, and that’s what he focuses on. His heart rate kicks up as soon as he turns his attention to it, but he takes some deep breaths, and tries to relax. 

He can’t get too close to the thought without feeling sick with nerves, so he skirts along the edge of it. Gently, and trying not to rush. 

He manages to put this into words: _I am capable of loving someone._

He knows this to be true, even if he can’t look at it too closely. He knows he _can_ love, and he knows that he _does._ He can feel it in his chest, like a burn. He loved his mother, even though that wasn’t good for him. Her fault, not his. And he loved his father, before that. And he has loved his friends, more than he ever thought was possible. And he even loves tiny baby Isabel, in his own way. He stops there: his romantic history and future are too much for right now. 

So he moves onto this: _I am capable of loving someone in a way that isn’t harmful._

He knows this, because Patty said it to him, and it was true. He loves his friends, and it doesn’t hurt them. He might not be the best at loving people, but he can do it. He’s doing it. He’s doing the best he can and he’s not failing. 

He manages to think: _He is someone who deserves to be loved._

He doesn’t reach _loved by me,_ but he thinks that’s okay. He focuses on how good he is—how good Richie is, he tries hard to think his name—and how much he deserves to be loved by anyone. By everyone. 

He strings it together. _I am capable of loving someone. And Richie is someone who deserves to be loved._

That’s as far as he gets. But he feels good about those things. 

And then the next day, Richie asks him when he’s going to come visit again, and Eddie braces himself and thinks _fuck it, I can fucking do it,_ even though for the entire week he’s been terrified to even look at Richie, much less let Richie see _him._ But he goes, after picking up a few things from the store after work, and when he gets there the house is quiet, and dark, and when he steps into the living room he sees Richie there, asleep in the armchair with his hand curled around Isabel’s foot in the bassinet next to him. And it punches Eddie in the chest, seeing him there. 

He stands in front of Richie for a second, just looking at him. While he can. And it feels like everything in his chest is spilling everywhere, now that the plug has been pulled on it, but he tries not to let it drown him. He breathes, and he looks, and he tries to think, _I love him._ But the house is so quiet, and his thoughts feel so loud. It’s too much, so he lets it go, and just looks. And despite everything, his entire being strains toward Richie, like a plant reaching desperately for the sun. So he reaches. 

There’s a curl of hair falling across his forehead, and Eddie brushes it back carefully, just to satisfy the deep burn inside him. Blood rushes in his ears. His heart hammers. He smooths a thumb over his brow, and almost, _almost_ thinks that thing he’s scared of thinking. 

But then Richie’s eyes open, and that kind of fucks everything up. 

He doesn’t run away, though. He’s trying to get better at that. Richie asks him to stay, so he stays. He reassures himself that if Richie asked him to stay, that means he isn’t disturbed by Eddie touching him, even if Eddie thinks it’s the worst thing he’s ever done. But maybe Richie thought it was fine. Maybe he didn’t even notice. 

It gets easier, the farther away Eddie is from him. He gathers himself. He makes dinner, another sort of soothing rhythm. Stan comes out of his room, and they chat, and that helps. And sitting next to Patty, who loves him and touches his hand and accepts him, helps too. 

He leaves feeling...mostly okay. And he thinks that’s a lot more than he’s been able to say in a while. 

That weekend, though, all of the Losers get together at the Uris household, as an official welcoming party for both Isabel _and_ Patty. They’ve almost all been to visit already since Patty came home from the hospital, but it’s an excuse to congregate, and to bring them stacks of freezer meals and packs of diapers. Eddie can’t weasel his way out of it, and he doesn’t want to, really. He _wants_ to go. He just...knows it’ll be hard. He knows there’s some things he won’t be able to avoid. 

But he _does_ go, because he can, and that’s a thing that Eddie does these days: he does things that are hard but that he knows he can do anyway. It’s mostly to make up for all the things that he _can’t_ do, like visit friends in the hospital or hold babies or be honest with people, but it makes him feel proud of himself, anyway. 

Almost everyone is already there when Eddie arrives. Bev greets him just inside the door, swooping in and hugging him tightly like she hasn’t seen him in months, smushing her face against his cheek and pressing her smile into him. He grins, and hugs her back, and blows curls of red hair out of his face. 

Bill’s already there too, with Audra, who is rubbing Patty’s feet on the couch. Ben is standing in the kitchen with Stan. And Richie’s there, of course, standing in the living room talking to Bill, holding Isabel belly-down on one arm in that way that makes Eddie feel weak in the knees, swinging her gently back and forth. Eddie already feels like he needs to lie down. 

And then Richie looks up, and sees him, and his face just _lights up,_ and it punches Eddie in the gut, that there exists a person in this world who reacts to seeing him like _that._ Who’s happy to see him. 

“Eddie,” Richie says, loud enough to cut across the chatter in the room. 

Eddie offers a crooked smile, giving him a little wave. 

Richie grins. “C’mere,” he says. “Help me fight Bill about something.”

Bill groans and says, “Oh god, now you’re just going to fight each other _and_ me.”

“That is my ultimate ideal way for this to turn out,” Richie says happily, and pats a drumbeat against Isabel’s diapered bottom with his free hand, and beckons Eddie over with a jerk of his head. 

“You better get over there,” Bev says with a laugh, squeezing Eddie around the waist with one arm. 

“I better,” Eddie says with a sigh full of false long-suffering. He watches Richie’s gaze track Bev’s hand as it slides across his waist. 

The second he steps up beside Richie, he’s transfering Isabel to his other arm, and pressing his hand against Eddie’s lower back, his handspan so wide it covers most of Eddie’s back. Eddie pretends not to notice. “So what’s going on here?” he says, shifting back into the touch, just a tiny bit. 

_“Nothing,”_ Bill says, at the same time that Richie laughs and says, “Bill just told me he thinks marble cheese is a mixture of cheddar and mozzarella.”

“Bill, you fucking idiot,” Eddie says, and everything feels alright. 

Any gathering of all the Losers is complete chaos. There was already a lot of them to begin with, but now with Patty and Audra added to the bunch, _and_ a baby who occasionally starts wailing with no warning, it’s hard to hear yourself think. And Eddie doesn’t mind at all, arguing with Bill and Richie in the living room, and then laughing with Audra over pre-Derry photos of Bill on the couch, and then defending his (bad) taste in literature to Mike while they set the table for dinner. It’s a lot, and Eddie doesn’t know how their newer members handle it without having grown up in it, but it’s wonderful, and Eddie doesn’t know how he ever lived _without_ it. Without all of them. 

Dinner is just as loud as everything that preceded it, with the lot of them spilling off the table and into the living room to sit around Patty, yelling across the room at each other, laughing, offering jabs and compliments in equal shares. Isabel gets passed around as people take their turns holding her, and Eddie gets increasingly anxious as she makes it closer to where he’s sitting, worried he might need to hold her, that someone might just dump her into his arms. 

But when Bill, beside him, bounces her gently and then turns towards him, Richie is immediately reaching across Eddie from his other side, plucking her out of Bill’s arms, singing her name as if he missed her. And Eddie thinks, all at once, _I love him._

It’s the first time he’s been able to think it all week. And for once, just for one second, it feels good. 

“So Richie,” Mike says from the opposite side of the table. “Are you switching careers? Comedian to full-time nursemaid?”

Richie covers Isabel’s ears with both hands and says, “Fuck no. And neither would any of you, if you had to deal with the poop explosion I experienced today.”

Stan snorts. “You didn’t have to deal with it, either. You handed her to me and said, _today she’s your baby.”_

“And I meant it,” Richie says, tapping Isabel’s mouth when she starts to cry. “Right up until after her bath. Then she was mine again.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” Bev says with a laugh.

“It is when the baby in question is neither biologically nor legally yours,” Richie says. “Then you get to make your own rules.”

“When are you thinking of going back to work, then?” Audra asks, propping her chin on her hand. 

Richie frowns, and shrugs. “When Stan and Patty kick me out, I guess.”

Stan rolls his eyes. “We’re not going to kick you out. If you want to stay here and take care of our daughter all day, be our guest.”

“I’ll stay if you pay me,” Richie says, as if he wasn’t the one who just said he’d stay as long as they’d let him. 

Stan hums, and says, “That reminds me—”

“If this is about the three pairs of shoes I bought her, I don’t want to hear it,” Richie says loudly, over him. 

“No,” Stan says dryly. 

_“Three?”_ says Bill. 

“I couldn’t help it,” Richie says with a shrug. “Baby shoes are so tiny! Have you seen them? They’re like the size of my thumb, I blacked out and the next thing I knew I had bought them.”

“You didn’t black out, you cried in front of the cashier,” Stan says. 

“I’m pretending I blacked out for that part, too.” 

“Focus, boys,” Patty says from the couch, laughing. 

“He’s being annoying, I’m taking it back,” Stan says. 

“I’m not being annoying! I bought your daughter tiny baby shoes!” Richie holds Isabel’s foot out as if to prove it. She’s wearing socks with frogs on them. 

“She’s a literal infant,” Stan says. “When is she going to wear shoes?”

“She’s a fashionable baby,” Bev says. “She can wear shoes whenever she wants to.”

“I don’t believe in extraneous footwear,” Stan says. 

Audra shakes her head. “Divorce!”

“The shoes are cute,” Patty says. “But three pairs is excessive.”

“Divorce!” Audra repeats, but louder. 

“I dare not share my opinion,” Bill says. 

Audra pats his shoulder gently. “That’s probably best, honey.”

“We got you something!” Patty calls, over the ensuing chaos. “Richie, sweetie. We got you something. To thank you.”

“What?” Richie says, looking around in surprise, like he expects to see a new car or something inside their house. “Why?”

“Because you’re here every day,” Stan says. “And you won’t actually let us pay you.”

“The only reason you’re at work and not at home handling things yourself is because you can’t afford it,” Richie says, blinking wide eyes. “Stan—”

“We all pitched in,” Ben says, before Richie can object. “Well, most of us.”

“Yeah, what?” Eddie butts in. “This is fucking news to me.”

Stan holds a hand up to silence them. It mostly works. “We wanted to get you something to thank you for all the time you’ve spent here with our family.” 

“I hope it’s a vacation,” Richie says. 

Stan smiles at him. 

“What,” Richie says. “Is it a vacation?”

“It’s a vacation!” Patty sings. 

“No shit?” Richie gapes. “I can’t go on vacation, guys, I’m on baby duty!”

Mike laughs. “It’s not for right now,” he says. “We’re not stupid, Richie.”

“We got you a flight for three months from now,” Bev says, plucking an envelope from her purse and passing it to him. “And a swanky airbnb close to the Grand Canyon, because for some reason you’ve never been there.”

“I never had anyone to go with,” Richie says dumbly, still stunned. 

“Hold on, why am I the only one who didn’t know about this?” Eddie says, feeling very lost. 

Stan laughs. “Because I couldn’t trust you not to tell Richie before we figured out the details,” he says. “And we figured you were the person he’d take with him.”

Eddie blinks. He turns to look at Richie, who stares back at him. And then Richie breaks out into a smile and says, too soft, “Well, obviously.”

It’s too much for Eddie. He can only hope he smiles back. 

He extricates himself from the crowded, noisy table a minute later, while Richie is still in theatrics over the gift and everyone is still trying to insist that he deserves it, and then Ben gives him a _World’s Best Gay Dad_ mug and Richie has to pretend he’s not crying. Eddie retreats, and finds solace on the couch with Patty, currently alone. She’s smiling, and she looks happy, if tired, and when Eddie sits next to her, she pulls him closer, lets him lean into her. Richie is leaning back in his chair, head tipped up towards the ceiling, one arm covering his eyes while the other cradles Isabel against his chest. 

“Stop being so nice to me, I can’t take it!” Richie yells.

“What a sweetheart,” Patty murmurs, smiling. 

Eddie nods, and watches him, his lungs feeling too big for his chest. His heart squeezes painfully. He open his mouth and says, clumsily, the words tripping off his tongue, “I love him.”

Patty doesn’t say anything, or look at him. She just finds his hand with her own, and holds it, and presses a sideways, smiling kiss against his temple. 

Eddie’s eyes burn, and his throat feels thick. He swallows, and weaves their fingers together. And he can’t think about what he said, or what it means, so instead he thinks about the way this feels, the way Patty is patient and comforting and never smothering. The way she thinks he’s brave, but also gives him space. He breathes deep and says, “You know, Pats, you’re already an amazing mom.”

Patty shifts against him and says, “Hm?”

“I mean, honestly, you’re just. You know I only have terrible experiences with being mothered.” He holds tight to her hand and listens to her breathing. “And I can already see all the ways you do it different. You’re like. Everything the women in my life never were.”

“Oh,” Patty says. She sniffles softly. “I— Thanks, Eddie.”

Eddie closes his eyes and tips his head against hers. “Anyone would be lucky to have someone like you as their mom, is all I mean.”

Patty laughs shakily. “That...that means a lot to me, sweetie. You know I haven’t been able to do much mothering yet, so. That means a lot.”

“You’ve been busy mothering me,” Eddie says with a huff. 

“No I haven’t been,” Patty says. “I’ve just been your friend.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He soaks in the steady warmth of her. “I’ve been thinking a lot about, you know. The ways people love other people. And you do it really well.”

Patty sniffles again, and says, “Oh, now look what you’ve done, now _I’m_ crying.” 

Eddie laughs, and pretends his eyes aren’t getting wet, too. “Don’t tell Stan I made you cry.” He rubs his thumb over the bump of her knuckle. “I just think. Isabel’s really, really lucky.”

They both watch as Richie stands up from his chair at the table and lifts Isabel up close to his face to give her a dozen kisses before handing her off to Mike’s waiting arms. He holds onto her hand until the last possible moment. Patty smiles and bumps their knees together. “Yeah. She is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yall CHECK OUT [THIS ART](https://twitter.com/Evvobevvo/status/1249825049248501760) A READER DREW FOR THIS FIC OF RICHIE AND BELLY. i love it SO MUCH. receiving fanart of a fic i wrote is a dream of mine 🥺 so thank you <3


	7. Chapter 7

Richie is smart enough to know when he is being weaned off of baby duty. 

He’s familiar with the concept of weaning, because he is now the proud subscriber to a handful of baby blogs which he reads religiously during Isabel’s morning nap. Of course, Isabel won’t be weaning for a long time yet, but Richie...will have to. And that’s just the plain truth. 

But it doesn’t make it any easier. Patty is getting stronger and more mobile every day, and needs less and less help. Richie is being sent home more and more often, often as soon as Stan gets home from work. It’s more of a suggestion—“You can head home if you like!”—but Richie knows they’re relishing any bit of independence they can get. And that they need family time, just the three of them. And that they feel bad for making him stay with him all the time, even though he’s more than happy to do it. 

So he goes. And he stays home, or he bothers Bill, or he texts Eddie. And he workshops jokes to send to his manager, and remembers that he has an actual job, things he can’t put on hold forever. And weeks pass, and then a month, two months. And Richie still spends a lot of his days at the Uris’s, still gets to snuggle Isabel every day if he wants to, can at least stop by and hold her while Patty takes a nap, but he knows he’s not needed anymore, not the way he once was. 

It’s hard. Richie liked...he liked being needed. He liked being _helpful._ And he knows he can still be helpful and that he _is_ and that this doesn’t mean they don’t need him or want him anymore but it’s so easy to feel...unnecessary. _Extraneous,_ Stan’s voice offers in his head, always complaining about all those shoes Richie bought for Isabel. He’s not _useless,_ even though he sometimes feels it, alone in his house writing shitty jokes that he can’t be sure anyone will ever laugh at. He’s just. He’s always just something _extra,_ and he’s happy to be that extra person, he’s happy he can be that for anyone, much less his best friends, but. It’s hard, sometimes. 

For a little while, he was one baby’s entire world. And that was...that meant a lot to Richie. For those few weeks. That meant everything, that he could _be_ that for someone. He never knew he could be that, before. 

But he’s not that, anymore. And that’s _good,_ it’s good that her parents can be what they need to be, that they don’t _need_ the help of their daughter’s godfather anymore. But it’s just. It’s fucking hard. Not having that, anymore. 

But he will absolutely never tell anyone that, because vulnerability is for people with more balls than Richie has, so instead he acts like everything is fine, and puts in some work perfecting his forced laugh, and when the urge to go take care of a baby becomes overwhelming, he finds someone to bother instead. 

Luckily for Richie, he has another friend who “works” from home. And it is as they say: one man’s luck is another man’s misfortune. 

“Hello!” he sings on a Friday afternoon, throwing open the door to Bill’s house, because it’s his own fault for telling Richie the passcode to get in. “Honey, I’m home!”

“Go away!” Bill calls from somewhere deep inside the house. 

Richie grins, kicking off his shoes to head towards Bill’s study, where he pretends to write novels for eight hours a day. He pushes open the door quickly, hoping to catch him doing something blatantly not-writing, but he’s sitting behind his laptop at his desk and is peering over it at Richie judgmentally. “Hello, dear William,” Richie says sweetly. 

“Go home,” Bill says. 

“Why would I be at home when I could be here, providing you with a much-needed break?” Richie says, perching on the corner of his desk and making four papers flutter onto the floor. 

“You are so obnoxious when you’re needy,” Bill sighs. 

“I’m not needy! I’m providing a service here.” Richie picks up another loose paper, glances at it, and then tosses that on the floor, too. “Don’t try to pretend you were actually getting anything done, because I’ve seen you in the group chat like four times today.” 

“I’d get a lot more done without you here,” Bill says stubbornly. 

“But you wouldn’t have nearly so much fun,” Richie says, and then opens his mouth to yell, “Where the hell is my _wife?”_

Bill winces at his volume. “I think she’s upstairs.”

“Not anymore I’m not,” Audra calls from somewhere down the hall. “I heard the dulcet tones of my favourite nuisance.”

Richie sighs and clutches his chest. This has been his motto since his youth: any attention is better than no attention. The second he has too much time to think, he needs to go antagonize someone. And Audra is _always_ willing to entertain him, bless her heart, only a few short years deep into this routine. 

“Hello, darling,” Bill says as Audra steps into the room, just sounding tired at this point, which is when Richie knows he’s won. 

“Hello, acclaimed author Bill Denbrough. I see you’re letting people into your office during _work hours_ these days,” Audra says with a smile, bumping her hip against Richie’s when she hops up to sit next to him on the desk. 

“I definitely wouldn’t call it _letting,”_ Bill says, resting his chin in his hands to look at them. 

“Is he this much of a bore with you, too?” Richie asks. 

“Every day,” Audra says, grinning. “Usually he just needs more coffee.”

“I think I need a _drink,”_ Bill says. 

“Maybe what he needs is an afternoon romp,” Richie says. “I’m free, Bill.”

Bill grimaces at him. “I’ll pass.”

“That’s a first,” Audra says in a mock whisper. 

Bill rolls his eyes, and Audra laughs, and Richie takes her hand and tells her, very earnestly, “I love you best when you’re not away for fancy actress things, Audra.”

“Don’t act like you’re never away for fancy _comedian_ things,” she says, squeezing back. “Or at least you used to be, before you went on paternity leave.”

Richie sighs, and then sighs again, louder, trying to pass it off as a joke. “Yeah, but I decided to take a break from that to come bring you all some joy.”

“I’m bursting with it,” Bill says. 

“This guy’s been picking up beats from Stan,” Richie says, jabbing a thumb in his direction. 

“Aw, honey,” Audra says, patting his hand. “Did Stan tell you to take the day off again?”

Richie pouts babyishly, giving up the act. “He sent me home _yesterday_ and told me he’d _let me know_ if they needed me. Can you believe that bastard?”

“Oh, the cruelty of not forcing your friend to be your babysitter,” Audra says sympathetically. 

“I’m texting Patty right now,” Bill says, picking up his phone. “I will beg her to beg you.”

“She mentioned that Belly was being fussy today,” Richie sighs. “But she didn’t actually ask me to come and I don’t want to, like, just barge in. I mean, I barge in every other day already. I’m giving her a break from the barging.”

“Just because she doesn’t ask for help doesn’t mean she wouldn’t appreciate it,” Audra says. 

Richie shrugs moodily. “Can I just hang out with you?”

Bill glances up at him from his phone. He meets Richie’s gaze and holds it, narrowing his eyes. Richie pouts again. 

Bill sighs. “Fine,” he says. “But you two can go gossip or whatever somewhere else until I’m done in here.”

Richie grins. “Deal!”

He and Audra hop down from his desk and wander into the kitchen to break into a pint of bougie ice cream, which she insists was a Bill purchase, and they chat for a while about the upcoming press tour for a movie she wrapped up filming for a while back, before all of this baby business, and her next project, and Richie’s manager’s plan for getting him back on the horse. Bill joins them as soon as it hits 5:00, like he in any way keeps regular work hours, and picks up a spoon from the drawer to help himself to the tub, leaning against the counter. 

“Any plans for the night?” he asks, sucking fudge from his spoon. “Or the rest of the weekend?”

“You’re looking at it, Billy,” Richie says, spreading his hands. “You know by now that being a nuisance is my full-time job.”

“Everything else is just a hobby,” Bill agrees. “Any chance your job will take you to someone else’s house?”

“Don’t listen to him, Richie, _I_ like having you here,” Audra says, and Richie laughs and waves her away. 

“No real plans, no,” he concedes. “Guess I’ll...see who’s free and doesn’t mind entertaining me.”

“Richie, honey,” Audra says, reaching out to take his hand with her own, slightly sticky with ice cream. “Have you ever considered, you know. Putting yourself out there?”

Richie forces a laugh, even as his stomach dips. “Who, me? Nah, bachelor for life right here.”

“Aw, come on, Rich,” Bill says. “You’re a catch.”

“Offended that you immediately jumped to doubting my self-worth,” Richie says with a sniff. “Maybe no man can live up to the extremely high standards of Richie Fucking Tozier.”

“Yes, the Richie we know is _extremely_ cocky and overconfident,” Audra says, grinning. “Never, ever self-deprecating.”

“Okay, Miss California, no need to attack my character like that,” Richie says, drawing his hands back from hers. She laughs and grabs for them again, and he slaps them away to reach for his phone, which is vibrating in his pocket. “Oh, hold on, it’s my friend Stan who actually loves me.”

“You just told me he kicked you out of his house,” Bill says dryly. 

Richie grins and answers the call. “Hello, my love.”

“Hey, Rich,” Stan says, and his voice is tight and quick. “Are you busy?”

“Not particularly,” Richie says, dropping his smile and falsely cocksure tone. “What’s up?”

“Can you come over?” Stan asks. “Like, right now?”

Fear wobbles in Richie’s stomach, nearly makes him sick. “Yeah, of course. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing— I don’t know. Patty fainted.”

Richie’s stomach turns. “Shit,” he hisses. “Is she okay? What’s happening?”

“We don’t know, it, it might be nothing. We need to go to the hospital. Can you come? We don’t want to take Isabel there.”

“Yeah,” Richie says quickly, “yes, of course. I’ll be there in— I’m at Bill’s, I’ll be there in ten minutes. Shit, it’s like, the middle of rush hour—”

“It’s fine, just. Come as fast as you can,” Stan says, and his voice sounds close to breaking. In the background, Richie can hear Isabel wailing. “Thanks, Rich.”

“Of course,” Richie says, swallowing thickly around his terror. “I’ll be right there.”

“Thank you,” Stan says again. “I gotta go. Thanks, Richie.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Richie says. 

“I know,” Stan says. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Richie says automatically, and then Stan hangs up. Richie exhales shakily. 

Audra and Bill are watching him anxiously, waiting. “What’s wrong?” Bill asks, all business. 

“I don’t know,” Richie says. “Stan says Patty fainted, they’re going to the hospital. I have to go take care of Belly.”

Bill nods, and Audra says, “Do you want us to come? Or is there anything we can do?”

Richie shakes his head. “No, that’s okay. I gotta go.” He stands up. “I’ll keep you updated.”

Bill catches him by the shoulder and squeezes. “Stan trusts you,” he says. “Let me know if I can help.”

And that’s Bill all over—no matter how much he rolls his eyes and complains, he always has everyone’s back, and he always knows the right thing to say. Richie relaxes, just a little. “Yeah,” he says. “Thanks, Bill.”

He receives a quick, tight hug from first Bill, and then Audra, and then he’s gone, fumbling for his keys as he shuffles his feet into his shoes, half-running to his car. 

Traffic is a nightmare, because of course it is, and Richie nearly cries from frustration, knowing he needs to move, he needs to get there, he needs to be there for them, but he’s _fucking_ stuck behind a grey Volvo at a green fucking light. By the time he’s parked in their driveway and scrambled for the door, he’s barely breathing around his anxiety. 

He opens the door to the sound of wailing. Stan appears in the entranceway to the hall, holding Isabel and giving Richie a tight smile. “Hey,” he says. 

“Hey.” Richie is breathless. “How’s Patty?”

“Weak. Tired.” Stan rubs a hand over his face. “I don’t know. We just need to—go see what’s wrong.”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course, Stan. Here, give Belly to me—”

Stan nods, kisses the top of his daughter’s head. “Sorry,” he says as he hands her over, “Pat says she’s been like this all day, I don’t think she’s feeling well.”

Richie bounces Isabel gently, stroking a thumb over her wet cheek. “Don’t worry about it. You guys go, I’ll take care of things.”

“Okay.” Stan sighs, scraping a hand through his hair. “I’m really sorry for just, calling you out of nowhere like this—”

“Don’t be stupid, Stan,” Richie says shortly. “You know I would— _anything,_ Stan, I would—”

“I know,” Stan says, and manages a small, pained smile. “I know.”

Richie nods. “Go get Patty.”

Stan nods, and touches Richie’s arm gently, and then turns and goes back to his room. 

He emerges a minute later with his arm around Patty’s waist, and she looks pale and shaky, but she manages to smile at Richie, too, and say, “Thanks, sweetheart, you’re my hero.”

“You can repay me by coming back good as new,” Richie says, desperately trying to blink back tears as he watches her shuffle past. “Me and Belly will wait here for you.”

Patty smiles, and reaches out a hand for her daughter; Richie brings her close enough that Patty can kiss her cheek. He hugs Patty gently, carefully, and presses his own kiss to her temple, and Stan says, “I’m not sure how long this will take—” and Richie says, “It doesn’t matter, don’t worry about us,” and then the two of them disappear to the garage, and the door closes behind them, and Richie is alone. 

Isabel cries desperately in his arms, as if she can tell something is wrong. Maybe she can—Richie has come to realize that babies understand more than most people give them credit for. He tries to breathe out slowly, steady his heart rate, and paces around the house with her, shushing her gently. “It’s okay, Belly Baby,” he sings softly. “Everything’s going to be okay. Mom and Dad will be back soon, but for now it’s just me and you, and I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you.”

Isabel screams, and Richie wipes away the dampness under his own eyes, and holds tight to her. He can do this. He can _do this._ He needs to do this. 

It takes him over an hour of bouncing, pacing, and humming to get Isabel to settle and fall asleep. By then Richie feels completely drained, head aching and chest tight. He doesn’t dare sit down in case she wakes up, so he keeps moving, rocking her in his arms, patting her back. 

He looks down at her and wipes her red cheeks, shifts her in his arms. She’s so much bigger, now, than she was two months ago. She looks like a completely different baby, he barely recognizes her from his earliest photos of her. She’s twice as heavy, for one thing, all chubby and round and sweet. Her cheeks have filled out, and her eyes, when they’re open, are round and clear. And he’s watched her grow, of course, has been here for the entirety of it, but sometimes it feels like he’s still missing it, somehow. Like she’s growing too fast for him to catch it all. It’s scary, in a way. Knowing that he’ll be here less and less. And that she’ll keep growing and changing. 

He swallows down that fear, tries not to think about it. He’s here _now._ And she needs him. And that’s all that matters. 

His phone vibrates on the table, and Richie rushes to pick it up, hoping it’s news from Stan. But it’s Eddie’s number flashing across his screen. He picks it up quickly. “Hey,” he says, trying to keep his voice quiet. 

“Hey,” Eddie replies. “I just got off work and saw Stan’s messages in the group chat. You’re with Isabel?”

“Yeah.” Richie shifts from side to side, desperate not to wake her. “Have you heard anything new from Stan?”

“No. I’m sure you’d be the first person he’d call, Rich.” Eddie sighs. “You okay? Everything alright over there?”

“Yeah,” Richie says automatically. “Yeah, of course.”

There’s a brief pause, and then Eddie says, “Do you...want me to come over? It’s the weekend, so like, I don’t have anywhere to be—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Richie says, and he doesn’t even know why. 

“You’re sure?”

 _No,_ Richie thinks, because he does want Eddie to come, he wants to see him, wants to lean into him and touch him and maybe cry into his shoulder and for one day he wants to think about something other than the time he touched Eddie’s back and Eddie leaned into it. But instead he says, “Yes.”

“Okay. Let me know if you change your mind. Or if you need anything.”

“I will,” Richie says. “Thanks Eddie.”

“Sure, Rich. Take care, okay? And...and thanks for handling things.”

Richie doesn’t feel like he _is_ handling things. But it’s nice to hear anyway. “I’m just doing what I can,” he says helplessly. 

“I know you are,” Eddie says, and the earnestness in his voice nearly kills Richie. “I’ll talk to you later?”

“Sure. Yeah, thanks Eds. I—” He almost says _love you._ Maybe it’s because he said it to Stan, earlier. Or because he’s said it to Isabel a dozen times already today. Or maybe it’s just because he feels it so viscerally, all the time, whenever Eddie so much as looks at him. _God._ “Thanks,” he ends up saying, again. 

“For what?”

Richie swallows. “I don’t know.” _Existing?_ “I gotta go. Talk to you later.”

He hangs up before he can say something stupid. Something even _more_ stupid. 

“God,” he whispers to Isabel as she sleeps in his arms, mouth hanging open. “He makes me such an idiot. Sometimes I can barely stand it.”

Isabel makes a soft noise in her sleep, pressing her face into him, and Richie sighs and kisses her head and goes to find something to eat.

***

It’s 10pm by the time Eddie gets another call from Richie, and he picks it up instantly, his phone already in his hand. It’s been in his hand all evening—he can’t stop thinking about Patty waiting in the ER, and whatever updates might be coming.

“Hey,” he says breathlessly, as soon as the call connects. “Any news?”

“Huh?” Richie says. Eddie can hear Isabel crying in the background. “Oh, no, uh. I think they’re still waiting. Fucking ER.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, deflating. “Then, um, what’s up? Did you need something?” A pause. “Is Isabel okay?”

He hears Richie take a slow breath on the other end, and then a shaky exhale. “I— Dude, Eddie, I don’t know. I don’t know. She just cries all day and I know it’s probably, like, maybe she’s teething or maybe she’s just uncomfortable or gassy or not feeling well or whatever but I feel like I’m doing it wrong? Like I’m not taking care of her or I’m hurting her or, or maybe she just wants her parents and I’m not her parents and I can’t be and maybe she just wants them but I’m like— I can’t do it and she’s just fucking _crying_ and she’s been crying for hours and I don’t know what to _do.”_

Eddie doesn’t know what to say for a moment, struck dumb. Or rather, what he _wants_ to say is, _So why are you calling me?_ Because this is so far outside of Eddie’s area of expertise it’s absurd. Even after months of this, Eddie is still by far the worst with baby things. He’s still not good at picking her up or knowing what she needs or taking care of her or even being close to her. 

But he still remembers Richie calling him right at the very beginning of all of this, scared of changing Isabel’s diaper, just needing a voice other than his own telling him it’ll be okay. And that he called Eddie and no one else. So Eddie opens his mouth and says, “You’re doing everything right already. You’ve got this, Rich.” And then, impulsively, “Are you sure you don’t want me to come over?”

It’s stupid, because it’s not like _Eddie_ can do anything, he can barely even hold her, and he _definitely_ isn’t really capable of soothing her. But he just, he thinks maybe, if Richie wants to talk to him, then he’ll want—

And yet, he’s still completely shocked when Richie says, “Could you? I mean, you don’t have to, it’s literally shit here, I don’t know if I’ll sleep at all—”

“No, of course,” Eddie says quickly. “Yeah. I’ll come over. Let me just, I’ll grab a couple things, and then I’ll come over.”

“Yeah. I’m at Stan’s, by the way, not— Don’t show up at my house, I’m not there.”

Eddie laughs a little, breathlessly. “Yeah, no, I figured. Okay. I’ll be there soon.”

“You don’t have to,” Richie says again, for good measure. “And you can leave anytime, Eds, you can go whenever you want.”

“Richie?” Eddie says. “Shut the fuck up.”

Richie laughs, and it shakes something loose inside Eddie. “Yeah. Okay. See you soon.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and hangs up. 

This was a good idea. Right? He’s pretty sure this is a good idea. So Eddie’s not sure why he feels so much like he’s making some sort of terrible mistake. 

Isabel is still crying by the time Eddie gets to Stan’s place, and Richie looks like a _wreck,_ hair everywhere and face blotchy and eyes wild, and for a second Eddie is terrified that Richie’s going to want to foist her onto him, that in his desperation he’ll forget that Eddie can’t. Isabel is bigger and stronger and less fragile now, but Eddie still can’t, he’s still scared of dropping her or making her cry or doing something wrong, and when she’s _already_ crying he _especially_ can’t do it.

But of course, Richie is as wonderful as he has been this entire time, and when he sees Eddie he doesn’t try to convince him to take the baby from him. All he does is smile a little, eyes shiny, and say, “Oh, thank god. I thought I was going to lose my mind. She slept for half an hour and has been awake and crying ever since and I think I’m going to _lose it_ and I am so fucking glad you’re here.”

Eddie knows it must be _really_ bad if Richie is openly swearing in front of the baby. He usually tries not to, increasingly so as he arbitrarily decides she can understand him, or at least covers her ears if he feels the need. 

Eddie steps farther into the house, moves his hands restlessly, aimlessly. “Hey,” he says, a little awkward. “How are—how are things?”

“Terrible,” Richie says, scraping a hand through his hair, bouncing Isabel gently in his other arm. “She’s miserable, and I’ve tried _everything._ I think she hates me, Eds.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Eddie says, because he knows nothing about babies, has read so much but still understands absolutely nothing, but he does know that much. “Is there—can I do anything? Can I help somehow?”

“I honestly think she’s beyond help,” Richie says with a groan, patting her back desperately as she wails. “She’s got herself all worked up and overtired and I don’t think she’ll settle until she literally passes out from exhaustion.”

“I meant for you,” Eddie says. “Is there any way I can help _you?”_

“Oh.” Richie’s eyes go wide and surprised, like he never even considered that, like he never thought that someone would want to help _him_ in this situation. Like even if he told Eddie to come here for his own sake, he never thought Eddie would be doing it for _him._

Fucking moron. 

“Um, you don’t have to do anything,” Richie hedges, looking sheepish. Like he can’t stand the thought of asking for something outright. 

“Well then why would I be here?” Eddie asks, exasperated. 

“I said you could go whenever you want!” Richie insists. 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “That’s not what I mean, dumbass. I came to help. So tell me how to be helpful.”

Richie chews on his lip, pretends to be distracted by Isabel, turning her onto her stomach and swinging her back and forth. “I don’t know,” he says, barely loud enough to be heard over her crying. “I just like you being here.”

Eddie’s throat goes tight. He has nothing to say to that. 

So he sticks around, of course, and watches Richie desperately try to soothe the baby, and cuts up some watermelon for him, because at times like these the only thing Eddie knows how to do is feed people somewhat ineptly. And he learns what Richie means about losing his mind very quickly, because while Isabel’s constant crying is both annoying and concerning, it also soon becomes almost unbearably overwhelming. Just, the constant noise, and not knowing when or if it will stop, and not knowing what to do to make things better, knowing she’s upset and not knowing _why,_ and just. The constant, _endless_ crying. It’s too much. And Eddie’s only been here an _hour._

It’s...it’s almost enough to distract Eddie from the little domestic rhythms of it all. Of Eddie moving around Richie smoothly as he paces back and forth in the living room, of Richie talking to Isabel and then telling Eddie what she allegedly said in response, of Eddie stabbing pieces of watermelon with a fork to deliver it to Richie’s mouth while his hands are full with the baby and her bottle. Eddie googles things about colicky babies and reads them to Richie from the couch while he tries increasingly bizarre methods of baby whispering. He washes Richie’s shirt in the sink after Isabel spits up on it while Richie tries out skin-to-skin. 

Nothing really works. Isabel stays awake for longer now than she used to, which just means she can go on crying and crying, with only very brief respites when she eats. Eddie can barely hear himself think, which might be good considering the only thing he would be thinking about is...all of this. Richie, looking tired and stressed and frustrated, but also holding Isabel tenderly in his arms, always so gentle, never raising his voice, saying things like, “I am about to lose my shit, Belly Baby,” but still looking at her like he’d die for her in a heartbeat. And Richie walking around without a shirt on because it’s still in the dryer, holding Isabel against his bare chest, humming and singing softly into her ear. And Richie smiling at Eddie from across the room, resigned as Isabel refuses to let him sit down even for a second, walking laps around the house, passing by Eddie and nudging him gently, as if to say _hey, at least we’re in this together._ As if he’s just happy that Eddie is here. 

It’s not safe to think about those things. So it’s a good thing Eddie can’t. 

The hours drag by. The only updates from Stan and Patty are that they’re still waiting on tests. Eddie knows that means it probably isn’t an emergency, that nothing can be seriously, urgently wrong if the doctors are taking care of others first, but it doesn’t stop the anxiety from building. And Isabel keeps crying, and complaining every time Richie tries to sit down. They pass midnight, one in the morning, two in the morning. Eddie is achingly tired, and Richie looks worse. The two of them chat idly over her siren wail, both pretending that it doesn’t bother them as much as it does because at this point there’s nothing they can _do_ except withstand it. 

And sometimes Eddie makes Richie laugh, sometimes on purpose but often on accident, and Richie always looks so relieved in those moments, so delighted and openly grateful. And Eddie mostly feels useless here, ineffectual in the face of baby issues, but when Richie looks at him like that… Well. Eddie’s just glad he came. 

“Eddie,” Richie says suddenly, cutting Eddie off in the middle of a pointless, long-winded rant about work that he thought might be funny somewhere, eventually. Eddie clicks his mouth shut. It’s past four in the morning, and the house is ringing with silence. Eddie looks at Richie, who stares back at him, and then down at the baby in his arms. 

She’s dead asleep, tiny chest rising and falling, one fist clutched in the front of Richie’s shirt, the other stuck in her mouth. This is the third time she’s fallen asleep so far tonight—the last two times, she either woke up the moment Richie tried to put her down, or she woke up with a wail after twenty minutes. Eddie doesn’t want to get his hopes up just yet. 

Richie’s throat bobs, and he holds a finger to his mouth as he walks carefully, breathlessly to the nursery. Eddie barely breathes, straining to hear her wake up again, pierce this tenuous silence with a fresh, earsplitting cry, but it stays quiet. A minute later, Richie appears in the hallway, looking a little stunned. “She went down okay,” he whispers. 

“Oh thank god,” Eddie mutters. 

Richie falls to the couch beside him with a _wumph_ of air. “Jesus Christ,” he says, “sitting is _so nice.”_

Eddie laughs, slumping back against the backrest. “Now let’s just hope she _stays_ asleep.”

“If she doesn’t, I will lose my mind, Eds. I will lose my fucking mind.” Richie falls back to mirror his pose, and their shoulders press together. “Has Stan texted you?”

Eddie shakes his head, and pretends not to notice their shoulders, or where their knees are bumping. “Nothing new. They’re still suspecting anemia. Waiting on test results.”

Richie sighs, slides his phone out of his pocket. “Might as well tell him she fell asleep.”

“He could use the good news,” Eddie agrees. 

Richie taps out a quick text, and then drops his phone onto the couch beside him, tips his head back until it hits the wall. He exhales long and slow, and Eddie can feel how tense he still is, like he’s just waiting for this moment of peace to end. Eddie instinctively tries to relax his own body in response, like maybe it will help Richie to let go of some tension, too. 

For a minute, they just sit there, in the silence of the house. The baby monitor is on nearby, but Isabel is quiet. Eddie takes a slow breath, holds it, lets it out. He feels Richie’s shoulders sag, and Eddie is relieved until they start to shake a second later. Beside him, Richie takes a shuddering breath, and then hiccups out a sob. 

For a second, Eddie is struck dumb, has _no_ idea what the fuck he’s supposed to do. He turns, and Richie’s entire body is shaking, and he’s flinging an arm over his eyes, and all Eddie can think to say is, “Hey, Rich— Hey, what’s wrong?”

Richie laughs a little, a wet sound. “I don’t know,” he says weakly. “I don’t know, I’m just fucking tired, and I don’t know what I’m doing, and Patty had to deal with that all day and I wasn’t here and she’s fucking _sick_ and—and I wasn’t even here? But she’s not my fucking baby.”

“She is,” Eddie says helplessly, “I—I know she’s not your daughter but she _is_ your baby, Rich, and when she needs you, you step up, every single time.”

Richie takes a shaky breath and wipes his face. “I’m sorry,” he groans, “I’m just tired, I don’t know why I’m fucking crying.”

Eddie feels like crying too, honestly, after the night he’s had. And he wasn’t even the one holding the baby. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay, you know I don’t mind.”

“I feel stupid,” Richie says miserably. “I’m such a fucking baby.”

“I cry all the time,” Eddie says. When Richie scoffs disbelievingly, he insists, “I do! At therapy and stuff, like every single week I cry like a little baby.”

Richie sniffs, and wipes his face again, and turns his head to glance at Eddie. “How’s that going, anyway? Your...therapy and stuff.”

It’s an obvious attempt to change the subject, but Eddie allows it. “It’s, uh, it’s going okay. I think, um, we’re making some progress. Kind of slow, but. I think that’s normal. Paula says I’m not allowed to have more sessions a week so that it’ll go faster.”

Richie snorts. “Eddie Kaspbrak, trying to fast-track therapy. Sounds about right.”

Eddie smiles a little. He’ll take any laugh he can get. “Turns out I have, like, a _lot_ of problems. Who would have known.”

Richie snickers, which is even better. “Could have fooled me, for sure.”

He shifts then, leans against Eddie, and it takes everything inside Eddie not to tense up, not to bolt. This shouldn’t be a big deal. They’re—they’re _friends._ They used to be so tactile, as kids, Richie always hanging off of him, invading his space, and Eddie was...he was greedy for it, he craved it. And he still is, still does. But it’s so different, now. Now that Eddie is in love with him. It’s scary. It feels like too much, makes him feel too much. 

But Richie is tired, and stressed out, and Eddie forces himself to stay still, to not spook. He lets Richie lean into him, and after a long, quiet moment, he lets himself press back. Just a little. Because he wants it, so badly. And because he feels like Richie deserves it. 

“Sorry,” Richie mumbles as Eddie fidgets, trying to fit them together more neatly, like he thinks Eddie is going to complain. 

Eddie bites his tongue. “No, it’s okay,” is all he can say. 

So they sit there, slumped together, and. It’s so nice. If Eddie ignores the pounding of his heart, and the heavy dread that Isabel will wake up any second now, or that Stan will text them with bad news. But they’re here together. And the baby is asleep. 

The next time Eddie glances at Richie, his eyes are closed behind his glasses, and Eddie thinks he might be sleeping. Eddie feels exhaustion weighing on him, too, and thinks he might pass out any second. It’s so warm, and surprisingly comfortable, leaning against Richie like this. And it’s easy to feel safe and steady, here, with him. 

But then Richie says, softly, “Am I a good friend?”

For a moment, Eddie can’t find his voice, both shocked by the question and also too tired to move his mouth. But he needs to, so he says, urgently, “Of course, Richie, you’re— Of course you are.”

“Of course?”

Eddie gestures at him weakly. “Look at, look at yourself, look at everything you’ve done for Stan—”

“What about for you?” Richie cuts in to say, still leaning against him, not looking at him, maybe without even opening his eyes. 

“Of course,” Eddie says again, because it’s the only response that makes sense. “Rich, you’re my best friend.”

“Why?” Richie says, and his voice is surprisingly small. Eddie’s always surprised at how small his voice can be, when he spent his entire childhood trying to make it as big and hard to ignore as possible. “What do I do for you?”

“You—” Eddie tries to wrap his tired, hazy mind around it. “You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to _do_ anything to be my best friend.”

Richie exhales slowly. He doesn’t sound distressed, or upset. Mostly resigned, more than anything. Like he’s accepted this already, without ever consulting Eddie. “I’m a shitty best friend, then. If you agree I don’t do anything for you.”

“You don’t— You don’t have to _buy_ me, Richie.” Eddie swallows hard around a lump in his throat. “People don’t give away the title to whoever is the most willing to do things for you, that’s. That’s not how this _works.”_

Richie shrugs, doesn’t say anything. Eddie’s heart squeezes painfully, and he thinks about Richie just. Waiting and waiting and waiting for an opportunity to win someone’s affection. As if he doesn’t have enough of Eddie’s already. And Eddie’s not...he’s not the kind of person who _asks_ for help. He doesn’t want anything from Richie. He already has enough. 

“You make me— You make me feel good,” he chokes out, almost scared of how honest it is. “That’s what you do for me. You make me laugh and you make me feel...safe.” God, there’s no fucking way he would say any of this in the light of day. But. But. “You make me better. Just by being there. So. Don’t fucking say you don’t do anything.”

Richie draws a short, tight breath, and then lets it out shakily. Eddie’s eyes sting, and only halfway from exhaustion. “I don’t deserve you,” he says, voice clumsy. “I tell myself that every day.”

Eddie bites his tongue and says, “You deserve every fucking good thing that’s ever happened to you.”

He doesn’t dare imply that he might be one of them. He’s not that optimistic. 

Richie doesn’t reply, and Eddie doesn’t have anything left to say. It’s quiet, and Eddie listens to the soft sounds of their breaths, listens to his own heart rate slowing down. His eyes grow heavy. He has nothing left to say, so he just...wraps a mental hand around the feeling in his chest, the chaotic knot of emotion that lives there now, both desperate to escape and locked tight between wall after wall of protection. He pushes that feeling out into the world, that ridiculous, mindless matra of _I love him, I love him, I’m capable of loving him and he deserves love. He deserves everything._ And he can’t say it, so all he can do is feel it, deep in his bones, and hope that somehow, Richie soaks it in where they’re touching, and feels it too. 

Eddie doesn’t remember falling asleep after that—only waking up, sometime in the grey hours of dawn. He’s still on the couch, with a wicked crick in his neck, and his face mashed into Richie’s chest. They fell asleep on the couch, together. Richie’s arm is around him, and they’ve both listed to the side, Richie propped up in the corner against the armrest, and Eddie propped up against him. There’s a damp patch on Richie’s shirt where Eddie drooled on him. Eddie’s hand is clenched in the hem, like he doesn’t want Richie to run away. 

He’s not running away—he’s not even awake. Eddie can hear the soft, staticky sounds of Isabel waking up over the baby monitor, but she’s not crying. And Eddie is still so tired. And Richie is so warm. And Eddie wants him so, so much sometimes, it’s physically painful. And he can’t stop thinking about Richie thinking he doesn’t deserve this. As if Eddie is something worth deserving. 

Eddie wants to be that, for a minute. He wants to be something like that. So he doesn’t move, even though he knows he should. He stays where he is, and soaks this in. While he can.

If he closes his eyes, he can pretend that this is how it’s supposed to be. Waking up together like this. Eddie wishes this was how it’s supposed to be.


	8. Chapter 8

There were a hundred things Richie liked about the newborn stage of Isabel’s life. He loved how tiny she was, how small and soft and quiet. He loved her tiny sneezes and her big, blank eyes. He loved that all she ever wanted to do was curl up against his chest and snuggle on the couch. Richie had never really spent any time around a newborn before, and he’d fallen in love with it, with this tiny, alien creature. 

But Isabel at three months is an absolute delight that Richie didn’t know to expect. She lies on her tummy and kicks out her legs and holds up her head, now, and she sits up in Richie’s lap. She sucks her thumb, which is fucking cute. She turns to look at Richie when he speaks, and smiles at the sound of his voice. And that’s _really_ fucking exciting, okay, because not a lot of people who know Richie personally react to him that way, and he trusts the opinion of babies more than he trusts most. 

She’s also starting to make more sounds than just piercing wails, which is both an enormous relief and also a special kind of joy. 

“Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma?” Richie tries, holding her propped up on his lap, facing him. She makes some vague vowel sounds, puts her hand in her mouth. Richie pulls it back out. “Ma-ma-ma-ma? Come on, Belly Baby, work with me here. Consonants, kid, they’re fun! Da-da-da-da?” Belly gurgles, and smiles, and Richie smiles back automatically, ducks in to kiss her chubby cheek. “Good try, but not even close.”

“I’m sorry my baby isn’t genius enough for you,” Stan says, wandering through the kitchen. “I’d trade her in for a new one, but the hospital says they don’t do that.”

“I’ll get through to her yet,” Richie says, bouncing his knees for her. She has her hand in her mouth again. “I want her first word to be _Richie.”_

“I feel like R’s aren’t typically a baby’s first sound,” Stan says. 

“It’ll be Belly’s,” Richie assures him. “We’re working on it. Right Bells? Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh.”

“Guh,” Isabel says. 

“Pretty close,” Richie concedes. 

“She’ll be saying Eddie’s name first,” Stan says, walking over. “Babies likes D sounds.”

“That’s a good choice,” Richie tells her. “That was probably my first word, too.”

Stan gives Richie a look, eyebrows raised. Richie very quickly pretends not to see it and that he didn’t say anything. 

He’s in the process of trying to make Isabel mimic at least one consonant when there’s a knock at the door, and Stan opens it to reveal Mike, Bill, and Ben. “Hey,” Mike says, grinning at him. “You two ready to go?”

“What?” Richie says, looking around from the couch. “Who’s leaving?”

“Is Richie coming?” Stan says, equally confused. 

“Wait, what? Where are you going without me?” Richie demands. 

Mike, Bill, and Ben all look at each other in confusion. “We’re going for dinner,” Bill says. “And minigolfing.”

 _“Without me?”_ Richie says. 

“No, _with you,”_ Mike insists. 

Richie gapes. “Since _when?”_

“Then who’s taking the baby?” Stan asks, jerking a thumb at Isabel in Richie’s lap. 

“I thought Patty was taking the baby,” says Mike. 

Stan shakes his head. “Patty’s at massage therapy.”

Ben looks very confused. “Then who’s taking the baby?”

“I thought Richie was taking the baby!”

“Why aren’t I invited?” Richie asks, offended. 

“You are!” Mike says. “I assumed Stan was speaking for both of you in the group chat!”

“What group chat?” Richie pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I have no group chat notifications about this!”

“You morons,” Stan says, pulling out his phone as well. “We were talking in the group chat for Richie’s fucking Grand Canyon trip. He wasn’t _in_ the group chat, I figured you all _knew that.”_

Three more phones are produced from pockets, followed by three very rueful looks. “Sorry, Rich,” Mike says. “We thought you were in the group chat.”

“So am I invited or not?” Richie asks, holding onto Isabel so she doesn’t fall over. “And Stan, why the fuck were you letting everyone plan a dinner without me?”

“I thought they cleared babysitting duty with you,” Stan says with a shrug. “Or that it was like, your idea and you told them to plan it without you so you could take Bells.”

Richie considers this, and then concedes. He totally would have. “So who _will_ take Bells?”

“Uhhh,” Bill says. “You can...take her with?”

Richie trades a look with Isabel. She coos at him happily. Richie nods his agreement. “Belly’s in.”

“Weird to take a dad out for dinner to get some time away from baby duty and then bring the baby, but okay,” Stan says. “I’m game.”

“You won’t be on baby duty, I’m on baby duty,” Richie says, compulsively kissing Isabel’s cheeks again. They’re so soft that he can’t stop himself. 

“Okay then get ready and let’s go,” Bill says, “the reservation’s at six.”

Richie gets up to find his pants and a clean shirt and Isabel’s baby carrier and also her diaper bag and a bottle and oh fuck he didn’t think this through— And then he freezes, and narrows his eyes, and says, “Where’s Eddie?”

The guys look around, like they’re expecting him to pop out of the fucking bushes, and then at each other. “Um,” says Bill. “I thought he was coming with you?”

“You said you talked in the Grand Canyon plans chat,” Richie says. “Which Eddie was _also_ not aware of.”

“Shit,” Ben mutters. 

Richie points at all of them. “You’re the worst! You’re all a bunch of morons! How could you not notice that he hadn’t responded to anything?”

“He’s small!” Bill says. “He gets lost in the fray sometimes!”

“It’s a group chat, Bill! He’s the same size as everyone!”

“To be totally honest,” Stan says, “this is also my bad, I forgot he wasn’t in that chat and thought he just didn’t want to come.”

“He really hates minigolf,” Mike agrees. 

“Yeah, because I’m really ffffffreaking good at it,” Richie says, without enough hands to cover Isabel’s delicate baby ears. “You are all so dumb. I have to call Eddie. The rest of you leave while I find some clothes.”

“Why are you babysitting in your boxers?” Bill asks. 

“Oh, you’re one to judge, _friend-forgetter,”_ Richie hisses. “Go away!”

Bill throws up his hands and turns around to walk back out the door, yelling over his shoulder, “Tell Eddie I’m sorry!”

“You didn’t even apologize to me!” Richie calls after him. “I hate you! I can’t believe I’m even coming to your stupid get-together. You’re in last place on my MySpace friends list, just so you know!”

Bill immediately pokes his head back in and says, “Say that to my face, you little shit.”

Richie opens his mouth, but Stan steps between them, rolling his eyes. “Break it up, kids. Richie, we’re all very sorry for not having enough brain cells to rub together to realize you weren’t left out on purpose. Please call Eddie and meet us at the restaurant, I’ll text you the address. We’ll order for you.”

“You better,” Richie says with a glare that’s mostly playful. “Turds.”

“I love you, Richie,” Ben says, the fucking dick. Works every time. 

“Love you too,” Richie mutters, and then goes to find his clothes for real this time. 

Fifteen minutes later Richie has Eddie on speaker, phone tucked into the front pocket of his shirt as he wrestles Isabel’s car seat into the back of his car with only moderate difficulty. “Hey,” he says as soon as Eddie picks up, “are you busy right now?”

“Um, not really? I was about to find something to eat—”

“Don’t,” Richie says. “I’m coming to pick you up.”

“What?”

Richie finally wins his fight with the seatbelt and leans in to kiss Isabel’s forehead before closing the door. “We’re going out.”

“We are?” Eddie says. 

“Yeah, for dinner,” Richie says. “You’re down, right? I’m about to drive to your house so speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Eddie says. “You’re...picking me up?”

“Yeah, you’re on the way,” Richie says. “The others are already there.”

There’s a pause, and then Eddie says, “Oh. Who else is all coming?”

“All the guys,” Richie says, finally turning on his car and backing out of Stan’s driveway. “Apparently this has been in the works for a while, but nobody realized we weren’t in the group chat, because they’re morons, apparently. I mean, Bill? Sure, I’d buy that. Ben and Mike? A little surprising, but Bill lowers their collective IQ. But _Stan?_ Unbelievable. Having a baby has ruined him.”

Eddie makes a soft sound, like a huff of a laugh, or a scoff. “How did they not notice you weren’t saying anything? Usually you’re saying _everything.”_

“Stan thought I was taking the baby, and the others thought Stan was speaking for me, like we’re married,” Richie says. 

“How did they not notice _I_ wasn’t there?” Eddie asks. “That’s kinda hurtful.”

Richie hesitates, and then admits, “We’re going minigolfing after.”

Another pause, and then, “Oh, _come on.”_

Richie grins. “It wasn’t my idea, I swear!”

“I fucking _hate_ minigolf.”

“I know you do, Spaghetti Head.” Richie flicks his gaze to his rear view mirror as Isabel makes a noise, but can’t see anything but the back of her car seat. “Anyway, I’m on my way, so expect me in like fifteen minutes.”

“Wait, if Stan thought you were taking Isabel, who _is_ taking her?” Eddie asks suddenly. “I know Patty’s been kind of nervous about being alone with her again since the fainting scare—”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve got her,” Richie laughs. “Belly wants to learn how to be good at minigolf too, right Belly Baby? Gonna be better than your Uncle Eddie at three months?”

“Shut the fuck up, you’re so not funny,” Eddie says. 

“Better than Uncle Eddie at minigolf before you can even crawl, right Bells? That’s the goal. It shouldn’t be hard.”

“I’m hanging up on you.”

“I’ll see you soon, Spaghetti,” Richie says with a grin, and then Eddie really does hang up on him, which is something Richie really loves about him. The man sticks to his guns. 

He makes it to Eddie’s a little later than he wants to—fucking traffic—and by then Eddie seems to have forgiven the minigolf jabs and is rolling his eyes good-naturedly, climbing into the passenger seat and turning, almost habitually, to tap the back of Isabel’s car seat, like a welcome. It makes Richie’s chest tight. 

They make easy conversation for the entire drive to the restaurant, a familiar rhythm of stupid arguments and obnoxious banter and laughter. It makes Richie feel warm, and his chest tight, the way things just flow between them, simple and comfortable. It makes him think of waking up on the couch at Stan’s, Eddie’s hand holding tight to Richie’s shirt, Richie’s arm slung around his waist. Holding onto each other. More honest in sleep than Richie can be awake. 

When they finally make it there, and get Isabel out of the car and into the restaurant, everyone is already sipping glasses of wine, and orders have been placed for all of them. 

“Why isn’t Bev here?” Eddie asks, sliding into a seat next to Bill. 

“It’s guys’ night!” Ben says. And then, more ruefully, “Also she had a work meeting tonight.”

“Oh, so you invited Bev to our guys’ night but not me, huh?” Richie says, exasperated as he fumbles a soother into Isabel’s mouth and sets her carrier between his chair at the end of the table and Eddie’s adjacent to him. 

“At least they thought they knew where you’d _be,”_ Eddie says. “They just forgot about me completely!”

“We didn’t forget!” Mike insists. “We just figured you didn’t want to lose at minigolf.”

Eddie looks thunderous. Richie wants to kiss him. 

Their food arrives shortly, and dinner is loud and raucous as always, even without Bev there. Richie’s hands are full just dealing with getting food into his mouth and not all over his clothes at the same time as fighting people across the table, but when Isabel starts fussing in her carrier he has to unbuckle her and bounce her on his lap, one hand holding her upright and the other twirling pasta around his fork. When she starts to cry, he abandons his meal altogether and stands up to walk in circles around the table with her, dodging waiters and elbowing Mike in the head on his way past him when he makes a bad joke. 

“I can take her, Rich,” Stan says, putting down his napkin and pushing his chair back. “You’ve barely eaten anything—”

“You sit down, Stanley Uris, I’m her dad today.” Richie shoves his chair back in with a hip check as he passes by, bouncing Isabel in his arms. 

“Then let someone else take her,” Stan says, rolling his eyes. 

“Mind your own business,” Richie says. “Eddie, shove some food into my mouth as I walk by.”

“That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” Eddie says, and then picks up Richie’s fork and loads it up with pasta. 

Richie grins and stoops to accept a drive-by bite of food. He gets blush sauce all over his shirt, and a little on Isabel’s head, but it’s worth it to see Eddie’s laugh, even as he shakes his head. 

Isabel eventually settles, and Ben takes her while Richie finishes his meal, then gives her to Mike while Richie splits a huge brownie sundae with Eddie. By the time that’s done, Isabel is hungry, and Richie has to juggle with some pre-sterilized bottles and ready-made formula, and afterwards he has to use the women’s bathroom—single stall, blessedly—because the men’s bathroom doesn’t have a fucking change table. But it’s fine. He manages. 

Afterwards, they head to the outdoor minigolf place, just as the early September night is cooling down, sticky and humid, and Isabel is nodding off in her carrier. Richie straps her into his (well, Patty’s) brand new baby sling across his chest, and she snoozes away as he gets his tiny golf club and chooses the brightest neon pink ball he can find. 

“Is she going to be alright in there?” Eddie asks, peeking at Isabel’s face around the edge of the wrap. 

“Don’t worry, Spaghetti, she’s out cold, which means you will _not_ be bested by a literal baby at minigolf tonight.”

“Literally, you are so fucking annoying,” Eddie says, smacking Richie’s shins with his own golf club. 

Richie grins. “Come on, Eds, you don’t have to be so insecure. Mike had a bit of wine tonight, so he might not be at the top of his game. Maybe you’ll only lose by a dozen strokes or so!”

“There’s genuinely no reason for you to feel so proud that your #1 skill is a sport for children,” Eddie snips.

“The reason is that it makes you mad,” Richie says cheerfully. 

“Okay, kids,” Bill says. “Eddie, keep score? Rich, you tee off first.”

“Gladly,” Richie says, crouching carefully so he doesn’t wake up Isabel as he puts down his ball on the green. 

“How deep does this rivalry go, exactly?” Ben asks, watching from the sidelines. “I remember you two fighting about this as kids—”

“It goes _deep,”_ Bill says solemnly as Richie takes his first putt. It’s a little clumsy with Isabel strapped to his front, but it’s still a solid stroke. 

“There was this little minigolf place just outside of Derry that we went to for someone’s birthday once,” Stan says, taking his turn next. “We were maybe eleven?”

“It was _my_ birthday,” Eddie says, watching with narrowed eyes. 

“Richie won by a lot,” Bill says. “Eddie _lost_ by a lot.”

“Richie hit my _fucking_ ball in the water!”

“That’s in the rules,” Richie says, leaning on his club happily. “You can hit other people’s balls with your ball.”

“That’s so not fucking true,” Eddie says furiously, and turns around his scorecard to read the rules on the back. 

“It’s in the fun rules,” Richie says, and stands next to him, and bumps his hip. 

Eddie fumbles with the scorecard, and it flutters to the ground. He clears his throat, and picks it up, and then shoves it into Richie’s hands so he can go tee off. 

Richie sighs happily and watches him go. 

It takes them over an hour to get through the 18-hole course, and it’s honestly a blast. Richie _is_ weirdly good at minigolf, but Eddie isn’t as bad as he was at eleven, which means he’s even more fun to taunt. Isabel wakes up around hole 10, but she seems to be content to just hang out in the sling, chewing on her hand and drooling on Richie’s shirt while he kicks everyone’s ass. Bill falls in the water trying to retrieve his ball, Ben falls in trying to help him out, Mike spends six minutes trying to hit his ball over a hill without launching it into outer space. Eddie gets so mad that he hits Richie’s ball with his own hard enough to send them both flying over the fence, and Richie makes Eddie climb over it to get them both, grinning as he watches. 

And then the sun starts to set, and one-by-one they finish the last hole, and Richie comes out on top as usual, but Eddie only comes second-last, before Mike, so he leaves the green looking decidedly smug. Richie can’t stop smiling at him as Eddie saunters back to the counter to return his club and tells the teenager working there that he got a hole-in-one on hole 14. 

When he turns back to the others, Stan is looking at him with raised eyebrows. Richie quickly schools his face into something a little less hopelessly lovesick. Stan doesn’t look impressed. 

“Well,” Bill says, stretching his arms over his heads. “It’s been great, boys, but I should probably head home.”

“Yeah, important work to do in the morning, huh?” Richie says. “Those words won’t write themselves.”

Bill smiles at him over a raised middle finger. 

“I should go, too,” Mike says. “I actually _do_ have work in the morning.”

“Oh, fuck you, I _do work_ you know,” Bill objects. 

“Bill, honey, we all know Audra’s the breadwinner in that marriage,” Richie tells him. 

“I literally have a book deal!”

“Sure, sure,” Richie says placatingly. 

“Alright, okay, we all have work tomorrow,” Eddie says, rejoining the group. “Bill, can I hitch a ride with you? It’s less out of the way than Stan’s.”

“Sure, of course Eds.”

“Right, I’m on Uris Duty,” Richie says, elbowing Stan gently. 

“You’re the only one with a car seat, so yeah,” Bill says. 

Ben looks at his phone. “Bev says come home, Westworld is on soon.”

“Gross, Ben, no one wants to hear your euphemisms for sex,” Richie says. 

Ben goes pink. “I like Westworld!”

“Leave Ben alone,” Stan says before Richie can get another word in. “Everyone go home, I’m tired of you all.”

Mike grins. “Goodnight, Stan.”

Stan rolls his eyes and smiles. “Goodnight, everyone. Thanks for tonight.”

“Still a good night even with me here, right?” Richie says. “I know how hard you tried to keep me away.”

“Sure, Richie,” Stan says, patting his back. 

“See you guys,” Eddie says with a yawn. 

“Yeah, you better take Eddie home, it’s past his bedtime,” Richie says. 

Eddie shoots him the finger. “You’re so fucking annoying.”

“You can’t say that to me, I vouched for you to come on this outing!”

“I can say whatever I want to you if you’re being fucking annoying.”

“Please go,” Stan says to Bill. “I can’t take it anymore.”

Bill laughs and tugs on Eddie’s arm, and Eddie rolls his eyes, and steps close to Richie, so close that it makes Richie go painfully tense. He barely breathes. 

And then Eddie lays a hand on Isabel’s back, and murmurs a soft goodnight to her, and then turns around and joins the others in walking away to the parking lot. 

Richie lets out a shuddering breath, and watches him go, throat tight. “Goodnight, Spaghetti Head,” he calls, and cherishes the middle finger he receives for his trouble. 

God, nothing has changed, huh? At heart, Richie’s still the same lovesick moron who can’t help but clamour for Eddie’s attention by any means necessary. That’s just...that’s how it’s always going to be. Richie might as well be resigned to it. 

And then Stan steps up next to Richie and says, as Bill’s car turns on, “Still Eddie, huh?”

Richie goes very stiff, and very cold. “Uh. What?”

Stan looks at him, eyebrows raised, and then in the direction of Bill’s car, and then back at Richie, head tipped to the side. 

Richie’s jaw hurts with how hard it is to open it. “I. I don’t know what you mean.”

Stan hums, standing close enough that their arms brush. He reaches out to stroke back a wisp of Isabel’s hair. “Yes you do,” he says. “Bells told me about it.”

Richie abruptly feels like he’s about to shake apart. He works his jaw, but his head is buzzing, blood rushing in his ears. He can’t breathe. “I—” he says frantically. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—” And then he laughs, kind of manically, and looks away from Stan, looks down at Isabel against his chest, and says, “Belly, what lies are you telling your father about me?”

“About Eddie,” Stan supplies. 

Richie laughs again, and it starts to feel a little bit like a panicked sob. He swallows hard. _“Belly,”_ he says, choking through it. “How _dare_ you… How _could_ you? I told you, I told you that in _confidence,_ and you have _betrayed me._ One— One thousand years jail!”

“Richie,” Stan says softly. “You can’t deflect from this forever.”

Richie swallows again, and it’s painful. “Deflect from what? There’s nothing—”

Stan just looks at him, gaze steady and knowing, and it strikes fear deep into Richie’s chest. There’s something so comforting about your friends knowing you, and loving you regardless. But Richie wasn’t ready—he wasn’t ready for anyone to know _this._ His chest squeezes. 

He looks away. “Please don’t look at me, Stan,” he says weakly, stroking over Isabel’s back compulsively, rubbing the edge of the sling between his fingers. “I really, I cannot handle it. At all. Just. How did you even _know.”_ And then, quickly, “No don’t tell me actually.”

Stan is still standing close beside him, and Richie thinks he’s still looking at him. “You’re my best friend, Richie,” he says. “And I knew when we were kids. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

Richie nearly squawks. “You knew as _kids?”_

Stan shrugs. “Not my fault I have such a big brain.”

Richie is shaking uncontrollably. He abruptly needs to sit down—he fumbles his way over to the bench next to the parking lot. Stan joins him there, sinks down next to him, and after a few moments of silence, he takes Richie’s hand, holds it tightly. Richie lets him, sweaty-palmed and terrified, and tries to take comfort from it, still stroking over Isabel’s back with the other hand, over and over and over, feeling the soft texture of the sling against his fingertips. He draws a deep, rattling breath, and then another, and another. He lets them out as slowly as he can. He swallows and says, “I’m sorry. I know it’s, like, not a big deal and you won’t tell anyone and shit. It’s just—” He lets out a short breath, squeezes his eyes shut. “It’s been a secret for so long. I kind of freaked out.”

“I know,” Stan says. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

He holds Richie’s hand, and Richie loves him so, so much. 

“It _is_ a big deal,” Stan says. “For you. So it’s a big deal for me.”

Richie’s next exhale is a painful wheeze. He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything, eyes burning, throat thick. 

“You’re never going to tell him?”

Richie shakes his head. “No. Never.”

Stan nods. “Okay,” he says, like it’s that simple. “I get it. But...I don’t think it’d be so bad if you did.”

 _“Never,_ Stan, not ever.”

“Okay,” Stan says. 

They sit there for a few minutes, quiet. Richie slowly gets a hold of himself, slowly rearranges his psyche around the fact that Stan knows, that Stan _always_ knew. Richie thought no one could possibly know. He thought if they knew, his life would end, so they couldn’t. 

But Stan knows. And he’s still here. And maybe he made the decision to feel that way as a kid and it didn’t make sense even then. So maybe he doesn’t have to feel that way now. 

He exhales, and it’s less wheezy this time. He clears his throat and says, “You knew as _kids?”_

“Really, Richie, just. An _enormous_ brain,” Stan says, very serious, and it makes Richie laugh. And then Stan says, “Don’t worry, all our other friends are dumb as shit,” and that makes Richie laugh harder, and it hurts, laughing, when he still feels so stiff and sore and scared. But it feels good. 

“Thanks,” he says eventually, still holding Stan’s hand on the bench. He glances at him quickly, and then away. “For, you know. Telling me you knew. Instead of one day making me tell you.”

Stan shrugs, and Richie catches the edge of a smile from the corner of his eye. “Bells told me.”

Richie huffs a laugh, and ducks down his head to kiss her head, sleepy and warm against him. “You little jerk,” he murmurs against her hair. 

Stan leans against him, his hand warm and tight around Richie’s. “It’s not a bad thing, you know. To love him.”

Hearing it said out loud like that—that Richie loves him—is more terrifying than Richie thought it would be. But he swallows past that and says, voice hoarse, “I know.”

“And if anyone loves you more than me, it’s him,” Stan adds with a hum. 

Richie sniffs, and nods, and rubs his eyes furiously under his glasses. 

And Stan says, “No one knows how much you deserve it better than I do.”

Richie makes a weird hiccupping noise, and shoves Stan with his shoulder, and says, “Stop, jesus christ, I’m going to cry.”

Stan laughs softly, and leans back against the bench, staring up at the darkening sky. “I just. I can’t wait to see you so, so happy one day, Rich.”

Richie scrubs over his face with as much vigour as he can muster. His heart slams against his ribs. He says, “I’m already so happy. Here, with all of you.”

“Good,” Stan says, squeezing his hand. “Me too.”

Richie takes a deep breath, and tips his face up to the sky, too. And they just sit there, quietly. And Richie thinks that maybe there _aren’t_ things that have to stay secret forever. That’s still something he’s learning.

***

As soon as Patty returned from the hospital, Eddie started spending dramatically less time at the Uris household.

In a lot of ways, he was glad. Baby duty never got much less stressful for him, and he never got much better at it. The pervasive dread that he might, at a moment’s notice, have to take over caring for a newborn, never really let up. And it’s nice, having those nights free now, and no longer worrying a hundred things he couldn’t do anything about. 

But he misses it, too. He misses...Richie. And seeing Richie like that, soft and nervous and competent. He misses spending his evenings cleaning bottles and watching Richie feed and burp the baby like it’s all he ever wanted to do. He misses making sure they were both fed, and tidying the kitchen while Richie napped on the couch, and taking care of things. Eddie’s spent his entire life being taken care of. It was nice to be on the other side of the fence for once. He liked it. He liked...taking care of Richie. 

And he liked being able to take care of Stan and Patty, too, in little ways, and just because Patty is feeling better and able to take care of Isabel on her own now doesn’t mean he can’t still do that. 

So he stops by on a Friday night on his way home from work, knowing Stan had to stay late at work, just to check in on Patty and make sure she doesn’t need anything. 

When he arrives, though, there’s already another car parked in the driveway, and when he knocks it’s Audra rather than Patty who answers it. “Oh!” she says, face lighting up. “Eddie! Yes!”

“Huh?” he says. 

“Patty!” Audra calls back. “Eddie’s here!”

“Oh, Eddie!” comes Patty’s voice from somewhere inside. “Come in, join us!”

Eddie laughs a little. “Sorry, Pats, I didn’t mean to intrude, I was just stopping by to make sure you didn’t need anything.”

“You’re not intruding!” Audra says, reaching out to grab his hand and tug him inside. “Come on, we ordered pizza.”

Eddie reluctantly allows himself to be pulled in, and the door closes behind him. Patty is at the kitchen island, pouring a glass of wine, and Bev appears in the hallway, beaming as she spots him. “Eddie’s here?” she says, sounding delighted. “Now it’s a _party.”_

Eddie rubs a hand through his hair, chuckling. “Hi, everyone. What’s happening here?”

“Bev and Audra are throwing me a ladies’ night,” Patty says, lifting her wine glass. “I told Stan he gets the night off, I think he’s going to watch a movie by himself.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Where’s Isabel?”

“Richie has her,” Patty says with a fond smile. “He said he wanted to take her on a godfather-daughter date.”

Warmth blooms in Eddie’s chest. “Oh,” he says, clearing his throat. “Um, anyway, I’ll fuck off then—”

“No, stay!” Audra says. “You should stay.”

“It’s a ladies’ night,” Eddie says, waving his hands. “I’m not a lady.”

“You are beloved by these ladies, though,” Bev says. “Come on, Eds.”

“At least stay for pizza?” Patty adds, and she sounds so genuinely hopeful that Eddie can’t help but give in. 

“Fine,” he says. “But then I’m getting out of your hair.”

All three of them cheer, as if Eddie crashing their ladies’ night is the best outcome for the night they could have imagined, and Eddie is pulled further into the house to join Audra and Bev on the couches until the pizza arrives. 

In all honesty, Eddie quickly forgets that he’s outnumbered three to one. Eddie never had a lot of female friends growing up—Bev was such a fleeting presence even in the Losers’ Club until they all returned to Derry—and he wouldn’t exactly call his relationship with Myra a _friendship,_ nor did he ever spend any time with her friends if he could possibly avoid it. But these people, here, _are_ his friends, just like any of the other Losers. The three of them are dressed down and comfortable, feet up on the couches and curled in the armchair, and Eddie does feel stiff and strange next to them in his work clothes, but they never make Eddie feel out of place. They talk about work, and TV, and finance, like a bunch of lower-case-L losers. Audra is not-so-secretly a massive nerd, and they talk about comic books, and movie adaptations. Patty and Eddie have some weird indie music in common, and he has to find a song for her to play over their living room speakers. Bev gives him some tips for fixing his leaky faucet at home. 

The pizza comes, and they all sit on the living room floor around the box and eat it out of napkins. Patty and Audra drink wine, and Bev and Eddie drink soda, and Eddie drips pizza grease onto one of his best work shirts. 

“Fuck my life,” he sighs, holding it away from his skin. “I knew I should have changed.”

“Take that off, I’ll pre-treat it before the stain sets,” Patty says, nudging him with her toe. 

“Maybe I’ll just head home, let you ladies do whatever—” Eddie hedges. 

“Oh, fuck off, Eds,” Bev laughs. “I had to hang out with six boys for an entire summer, and I didn’t complain _once.”_

“I’m not complaining!” Eddie insists. “I just figured I’d leave you all alone—”

“Eddie doesn’t like our party,” Audra says, shaking her head regretfully. 

“Eddie hates us and also having fun,” Patty agrees. 

“I don’t!” Eddie laughs. “But it’s not like I was on the formal invite list.”

“We added you,” Bev says. “Now shut up and eat your pizza.”

“I’m covered in pizza sauce!”

“I told you to take it off!” Patty says. 

“I’m sure Pats has something for you to wear,” Audra says, already giggling. 

Patty bites her lip to poorly hide a smile. “Yeah, Eds, I’m sure I could find something that fits you.”

“I literally just need a t-shirt,” Eddie says firmly, before this gets out of hand. “And you have a husband.”

“Don’t tell me you want to wear those slacks all night,” Bev says, shaking her head. “We’ll find you something to wear.”

“Oh my god, fuck off,” Eddie says. “I did not agree to a teenage slumber party.”

Audra pats his hand and says, “Yes you did.”

Ten minutes later, Eddie’s shirt is in the wash, and Eddie is on the couch in some fucking mint green terry cloth shorts straight out of the 80s, and pink socks, and a truly massive t-shirt that says _HOT MAMA_ on it that Patty apparently got as an unfortunate gift from a coworker. And everyone is laughing so hard, Patty especially, that Eddie can’t even feel stupid about it. So he just laughs along, and digs his feet under Audra’s thigh, and eats another slice of barely-warm pizza, and lets Bev squirm to sit under his head and comb her fingers through his hair. 

And it’s honestly...really nice. The night gets increasingly ridiculous and stereotypically girly as it goes on, and Eddie finds that he doesn’t mind at all. The ladies talk about their husbands, and weddings, and skin care, and Audra paints Patty’s nails for her, and Bev asks Audra where she got her lipstick, and Eddie relaxes and listens and just. Enjoys it, surprisingly. He thought, for a long time, that he didn’t _like_ spending time with women. Wondered, after getting married, if female company just wasn’t his thing. But he _does_ like it. He fumblingly paints the nails on his left hand dark red, and asks Bev what kind of moisturizer she uses because her hands are _extremely_ soft, and enthusiastically joins in the discussion about anti-feminist romance movies, because he had to watch a lot of them as a married man. 

Eddie thought maybe he didn’t _like_ women, for a while there. But that’s not true. And it’s not even that he enjoys these specific three people, here, in spite of the fact that they’re women. He _likes_ their femininity, and he likes having different conversations with them than he would with the male Losers, and he likes Audra’s delicate hands applying eye cream to the skin under his eyes. He fucking _likes_ women. 

Just. Maybe not in the way he always thought he was supposed to. 

But that is way too fucking much for a ladies’ night on a Friday evening, so he shakes it off, and talks to Audra about the Star Trek reboot, and lets Bev paint the nails on his right hand much more competently than he did, and enjoys it. 

He panics a little when his phone buzzes on the counter, and extricates himself carefully from the couch to pick it up with his left hand, trying not to ruin his horribly ugly nails. It’s Richie, on FaceTime, and he answers it quickly, automatically concerned. “Hello?”

Richie’s face beams at him from his phone screen. “Hey, Eddie Spaghetti. What’s up?”

“Um, just hanging out at Patty’s a bit,” he admits. “What’s up?”

“Oh, seriously? That’s cute. I’m hanging out with Belly, we went for a walk at the park and got ice cream.”

“You better fucking not be feeding that baby ice cream,” Eddie says, and then quickly adds, “Sorry, I know you wouldn’t do that, you’re not an idiot, sorry.”

Richie laughs. “Honestly, I probably would if Stan didn’t regularly remind me not to,” he says. He pulls his phone farther away from his face, and Eddie can see the top of Isabel’s head, covered by a tiny yellow hat, and then her forehead beneath it, and then her wide, dark eyes. She’s propped up in Richie’s lap, leaning against his chest, and she’s peering up at his phone intently, watching Eddie’s face. “Say hi to Uncle Eddie, Belly!”

“Hi Belly,” Eddie says automatically, and his stomach dips at the way it makes Richie grin. “Um, why were you calling, Rich?”

“What, I can’t call my best friend in the middle of a baby date?” Richie asks. He appears to be still at the park, sitting on a bench outside as the sky darkens overhead, a pool of golden light from a lamp surrounding him. “But actually I wanted to show you something.”

“Hmm?”

“Watch this,” Richie says, and then shifts Isabel and nudges her head with his chin, turns her so that she’s looking up at him again. “Belly, look. Belly. _Da-da-da-da?”_ Isabel burbles, and reaches up to try to put her hand in his mouth. Richie nudges it away and tries again. _“Da-da-da?”_

 _“Duh,”_ Isabel mimics, and Richie whoops, looking ecstatic.

“That’s my baby girl,” Richie says proudly. “Eddie, I’m trying to teach her to say your name.” He leans down to kiss her cheek with a smile. 

Eddie very abruptly can’t speak, throat bobbing as he tries to remember just to _breathe._ “Wow,” he croaks. “That’s, uh, that’s awesome Rich.”

“I’m raising a genius baby,” Richie says. “Tell Patty I’m taking over her education.”

Eddie lifts his head quickly to look across the room, suddenly remembering he’s not alone, and finds all three of the women on the couches watching him, smiling fondly. He swallows again. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to show you that,” Richie says. “Hope you’re having fun at Patty’s. Hey, how was that work thing? That meeting you were dreading.”

“Terrible,” Eddie says. He tears his eyes away from Patty’s knowing gaze and looks back at Richie. “Everyone is so annoying. It’s like— It’s like a bunch of Richies in one room except no one’s even funny.”

Richie laughs, loud and bright. “Aw, Eds, you think I’m funny? That’s so sweet.”

“You better be at least a little funny, or else you’re way overpaid,” Eddie says. 

“Nah, that’s all for my sex appeal,” Richie says. “Anyway, I’ll let you go. Tell Patty I’ll be home with her daughter in like twenty minutes. I’ll keep working on the name thing.”

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie says, and can barely watch the way Richie rubs his cheek mindlessly against the top of Isabel’s head. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Night, Eds,” Richie says, voice warm. “Belly, say goodnight.” He lifts up her little fist to wave at him. 

“Goodnight, Bells,” Eddie fumbles to say, and then hangs up before he can make a complete fool of himself. And then, once the call has ended, he says, _“God.”_ Because seriously. _Jesus_ christ. 

Everyone is still watching him. Eddie knows his face must be bright red. “Wow,” Audra says. 

“I know, okay?” Eddie says, chest squeezing. “I know.”

Bev holds out her arms, and Eddie puts down his phone and stumbles back to the living room to fall back down to the couch and let her pat his back. He buries his face in his hands. A sudden wave of anxiety chokes him, and he fights to say, “Does everyone know?”

There’s a pause, and then Bev says gently, “Know what?”

“Fuck,” Eddie sighs. “Come on, Bev, you don’t have to pretend you don’t.”

“Honey,” Bev says, stroking her hand through his hair. “We don’t know anything unless you tell us.” And then, “And you don’t have to tell us anything.”

Eddie exhales harshly, rubs his hands over his face. He turns to look at Patty in the armchair, patient and sympathetic and understanding as always, and then at Bev, and Audra. Neither of them are looking at him like he’s pathetic or obvious or ridiculous, even though he feels like he’s all three, all the fucking time. Instead, they’re just...looking. And waiting. And Audra is saying, “Do you just want to forget about it?”

Eddie swallows thickly. He shakes his head. “Do you really not know?”

“I mean, sweetheart, at this point I could take a guess but I’m not going to say I know something that I don’t,” Audra says. 

Eddie knows he doesn’t have to tell them. He knows they would let it go and never bring it up again if he asked them to. He knows, because they’re good people and they love him. 

But they’re good people, and they love him, and Eddie wants to tell them. He thinks he’s ready to tell them. 

“I’m,” he says, and his voice chokes out, and he has to stare at his hands to take a deep breath. “I’m. In love with him.”

Bev wraps her arms around him, and lets Eddie press his face into her shoulder. His eyes go hot and his chest goes tight but no one says anything, no one says _we knew_ or _it’s okay_ or _finally._ Audra moves over from her couch and holds his hand, and Patty smiles at him and nods. Eddie wipes wetness from his cheeks and smiles back. 

“I love you so much,” Bev tells him. “And I think you’re really brave.”

“Oh, god,” Eddie says, and has to rub his eyes before he starts openly weeping. “Okay, okay. I’m done. God, this is so much.”

“For what it’s worth,” Audra says, “I _didn’t_ know. I knew you two were close, but, like. It’s not like everyone and their mother could tell from a mile away.”

“Oh, thank fucking god,” Eddie breathes. “Please don’t think about it every moment you see us together. We’re just. I mean. Everything is mostly normal, I swear. I think maybe, you know, I was _always_...in love with him.”

“We won’t make it weird,” Bev promises. 

“Okay,” Eddie says, and tries to breathe. “Alright. Let’s talk about something else now.”

“He’s _really_ cute with the baby, though,” Audra adds quickly. “Like, I mean. I get it.”

 _“So_ fucking cute,” Eddie agrees, and then abruptly cannot talk about it anymore and has to lie down on the couch while Patty goes to get him a bowl of ice cream. 

He kind of just lies there after that, eats his ice cream and listens to the others talk and laughs at Patty’s slightly tipsy jokes. At first, his heart pounds against his ribs incessantly, and his head hurts, and his chest feels tight, but after a while the blood stops rushing in his ears, and the tension in his limbs unwinds. He manages to breathe more deeply, and he closes his eyes and smiles and lets this sense of safety wash over him, for as long as it lasts. 

And then there’s a knock at the door, and it swings open, and Richie is standing there, sleeping baby and diaper bag in hand. He’s grinning, and saying, “Hey, where’s the party?” and then he’s looking at Eddie, and his eyes are going very wide. 

“Uh,” Eddie says, with the sudden realization that he’s still in Patty’s clothes, with his hair everywhere and his nails painted and _shit,_ he probably looks absolutely ridiculous. “Hello.”

Richie stares at him dumbly for a long, crushingly silent moment. Isabel snuffles and squirms in his arms. “Hi,” he says, way too late. 

Eddie’s face feels hot with embarrassment. He sits up, running a hand through his hair quickly. “I just—” he starts to say, and then stops, because there’s really nothing he can say to rationalize this. He’s just...yeah. This is happening. 

“Okay,” Richie says anyway. He clears his throat, and then seems to remember why he’s here, and also that they’re not the only two people here. “Um, hi Patty, and. Ladies. Here’s your baby.”

“Thank you, Richie,” Patty says, voice warm with suppressed laughter. “How was she?”

“Good. Really good. We had a good time.” He sets the diaper bag down inside the door and hefts Isabel in his arms. “She, um, fell asleep on the way home. I’ll go put her down.”

“Alright,” Patty says. “You’re free to stay a bit if you’d like. There’s still some pizza.”

“No, that’s okay,” Richie says quickly, tripping out of his shoes before moving towards the bedroom. “I’m gonna head home. Thank you though. I’ll be right back.”

He disappears down the hallway, and everyone turns to look at Eddie. 

“Don’t you fucking say anything,” Eddie hisses, “you promised you wouldn’t be weird.”

“That’s not what we’re being weird about,” Audra says. 

“Yes you are, literally the second he stepped inside you started being weird,” Eddie insists. 

“Eddie, sweetie,” Patty starts to say, but then Richie reappears, and he’s looking at Eddie again, and his cheeks are pink. 

“So,” he says. “She’s still asleep. So I’m gonna go, I think.”

“Thank you so much, Richie,” Patty says. “Tonight was wonderful, I really appreciate you taking her.”

“Course, it was my pleasure,” Richie says, glancing at her briefly and smiling. “Glad you had a good time.”

“We had a _great_ time once we dragged Eddie into it,” Audra says. 

Richie is back to looking at him. “I can see that,” he says. And then, visibly shaking himself, he says, “Okay, I’m going. Bye, everyone.”

“Night, Richie!” the ladies chorus, and Eddie says it a second late, an awkward, lonely, “Goodnight, Rich.”

Richie glances back at him as he stuffs his feet into his shoes. “Goodnight,” he says, and then hurries out. 

“Oh my _lord,”_ Audra says as the door closes behind him. 

“That was terrible,” Eddie says, face hot. “You’re all fired as my friends.”

“Honey, no one could have saved you from that,” Bev says. 

“I hate it when he looks at me,” Eddie groans. “God, why did he _look at me.”_

“I think I know why,” Audra says, smacking his bare thigh. 

“This is all _your_ fault,” Eddie says accusingly, flopping back down onto the couch. “All of you. Mother _fucker._ He must think I’m so dumb.”

“Eddie, sweetheart, sometimes I think you intentionally misread signals,” Patty says. 

Eddie flings an arm over his eyes. “Oh, fuck off, he was acting _so_ weird.”

Audra scoffs and scratches his head gently. “Yeah, we noticed.”

“Shush, Aud, he’s fragile,” Bev says, and leans over to kiss his forehead. “I should probably get going too, honestly.”

Audra sighs. “Me, too. I promised Bill I’d read over something for him when I got home.”

“Well, thanks for coming,” Patty says, smiling up at them as they stand. “This was lovely.”

“Anytime, Pattycakes,” Bev says, blowing her a kiss. “And Eds, I’m serious, thanks for joining us. It was a blast having you here.”

Eddie snorts into his arm and shoots her a thumbs-up. 

“We love you!” Audra sings, already moving away to find her purse. 

“Every decision I made tonight was a mistake,” Eddie tells her. 

“Drama queen,” Audra hums, and Bev laughs. 

A few minutes later, they’re gone. Eddie groans and heaves himself upright. “Where are my clothes?” he asks. “I should get changed—”

“Stan won’t be home for another half hour,” Patty says, still in the armchair, feet tucked up under her thighs, looking at her phone. “If you’d like to stay a bit longer.”

And more than anything, Eddie isn’t sure he wants to be alone with his thoughts right now. So he sighs, and falls back against the arm of the couch, and rubs his eyes. He tries not to think about Richie, and fails. He looks at Patty and says, hopefully, “Is everyone this much of a mess?”

“You’re a special kind of mess,” Patty says, smiling at him. “But at some point, in some way or another, yes. Absolutely.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. “Good. I think I’m a mess in, like, all the ways.”

“You’re figuring some things out,” Patty says. “Go easy on yourself.”

“Figuring things out is _shit,”_ Eddie tells her. 

Patty laughs softly. “I know, honey.”

They’re both quiet for a while. Eddie thinks about Richie, and about Richie looking at him, and how terrifying it is. He says, “Why do you think I’m so scared for him to look at me?”

“I don’t know,” Patty says. “I mean, I think part of it is that you’re scared of him knowing.”

Okay, yeah, that’s fucking true. Nothing is more terrifying than Richie fucking _knowing._

But then she adds, “And sometimes I think...maybe you’re scared of the way he might look at you.”

Eddie looks at her and frowns. “What do you mean?”

Patty meets his eyes, smiles. “Have you ever thought about meeting other people, Eds?”

Eddie almost physically recoils. “Oh, god, no. Have you seen me, Pats? A fucking disaster.”

“That’s what I mean, sweetheart. Sometimes...loving someone is scary, but being loved by someone is even scarier.”

Eddie stares at her for a long moment, and then says, “No, fuck, Richie doesn’t—”

“That’s not what I mean,” Patty says, waving him away. “I’m not saying he does or doesn’t. I just think. Do you ever wonder if maybe part of what scares you so much about loving him, or loving _anyone,_ is the possibility of them loving _you?”_

Eddie’s eyes burn. He frowns. “I don’t think I’m anywhere _close_ to far enough in this, you know, fucking...emotional journey to even _consider_ him being in love with me.”

“This isn’t a matter of him being in love with you,” Patty says. “This is a matter of you being loved.”

And something about that makes Eddie feel shaky, right down to his core. The idea of...not of someone loving him, but of someone _wanting_ him. The idea of...being in a relationship. God, _fuck_ but it’s terrifying to think about. And it’s something he’s actively _avoided_ thinking about, since his divorce. Because that was such a _fucking_ shitshow and Eddie thinks he’s only gotten _worse_ since then, emotionally, like he is just off the fucking rails. “I really wouldn’t recommend it,” he says shakily. “I mean, really, Pats. Look at me.”

“I’m looking,” she says. “And he looks, too. He sees you.”

Eddie shakes his head vigorously. “I thought this wasn’t about him.”

“I don’t think it is, at the core,” Patty says. “But I think it’s part of why you’re so scared of loving him. Because loving someone invites the idea of them loving you back, and I don’t think you’re very good at that part, yet.”

Eddie laughs, a harsh, overwhelmed sound. “Yeah, no fuck. I’m a human disaster.”

Patty looks at him patiently. “I’m no therapist,” she says. “But I do know you have a few hangups about people saying they love you.”

Eddie groans, and pushes the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I’m trying to deal with it,” he promises. “Like, I promise I’ve talked about this with my _actual_ therapist. About, like, my mom, and Myra—”

“I know, sweetie,” Patty says. “I know you’re working on it, and that you’re getting better every day, and I’m so proud of you. I’m just saying, I think it’s tied into how you feel about him, maybe. And why it makes you so scared.”

“I just, I’ve had almost _exclusively_ fucked-up relationships in the past,” Eddie says, feeling extremely tired all at once. “I wouldn’t even _know_ how to be in a healthy relationship.”

“It would take some practice,” Patty agrees. “And a good partner.”

“I don’t even _want_ him to love me,” Eddie admits. “Like, I mean— What if the common denominator is _me?_ What if, like, all my issues and hangups and shit just, poison every relationship I have—”

“Eddie,” Patty says gently. “You know that can’t be true.”

“Do I?” Eddie says, a little hysterically. 

Patty slides off the armchair to come sit next to him, holding out her hand until he reluctantly takes it. She squeezes tightly. “Of course, you need to grow and heal,” she says. “But I also know that you’ve never had a good partner. And Richie—”

“He _doesn’t—”_

“Shush. Richie is— We _know_ Richie. Right? We know him. Look how...look how he is with Isabel. Richie loves _everything_ in the best way.”

Eddie swallows thickly. “He does.”

“He loves so much, and so unconditionally,” Patty says. “We know this about him. He’s _so_ full of love to give. He doesn’t care about your hangups, or your trauma, or anything. He just...loves.”

Eddie sighs, and shakes a little, and runs a hand through his hair. “He does,” he agrees. And then he says, “So much of my experience with love is, like. People loving me. Too much.”

Patty hums and says, “I know. But sweetie. Look at him.” She nods towards the door, as if he’s still there, dropping off the baby. “All he does is try to not be too much for people. All he does is...deny himself, so that other people can be happy without him.”

Something about that makes Eddie choke up. “That’s not— He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t feel like that, he—” 

Patty laughs softly. “Oh, sweetie, _I_ know that.”

“He’s always so scared of being too much,” Eddie says, shaking his head. “I hate it, I hate that, that someone made him feel like that. Did we make him feel like that? As kids?”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Patty says. “I’m sure being with you was the first time he felt like he could be whole.” 

Eddie exhales harshly, scrubs his eyes. “I don’t want him to feel like people don’t want him,” he says. “I don’t— I don’t _want_ to be without him.”

Eddie shuts up. He hadn’t meant to say that. He didn’t even know that was something he would ever need to put into words. 

Patty smiles, and squeezes his hand again. “I know.”

“I like being with him,” Eddie says, weaker this time. “I want to be with him.”

“I know.”

Eddie sighs, and tips his head back against the couch, and closes his eyes. _“Fuck_ my life.”

“Mhmm.” Patty leans into him. “I think that ends our session for today.”

Eddie laughs. “You’re not bad, Dr. Uris.”

“I know. I went to a lot of therapy with Stan.”

“So _that’s_ how he became so well-adjusted.”

Patty laughs softly. “That’s it exactly.”

Eddie hums, and breathes, and eases the tension out of his shoulders. “It’s just hard being alone with him, sometimes,” he admits. “He looks at me too much.”

Patty nods against his shoulder. “So what about that Grand Canyon trip in three weeks?”

Eddie freezes up. “Oh, _shit.”_


	9. Chapter 9

Travelling with Eddie Kaspbrak is an absolute nightmare, which means, of course, that it’s one of Richie’s special joys in life. 

The whole affair starts at 8 in the morning, when Eddie calls Richie to make sure he didn’t miss his alarm, which was not even going to go off until 9, because their flight is in the fucking afternoon. 

“Yeah, but have you packed already?” Eddie asks, sounding like he’s been awake and pacing for three hours already. 

“No, because I have the entire day to pack, because our flight isn’t for _ten hours,”_ Richie says, scrubbing at his eyes with a lazy smile. 

“Yeah, well, not all of us work from home,” Eddie says. 

“I am aware, Spaghetti Man, but I _do_ often work from home, including today, which means I have _ten hours_ to pack. Go to work, oh my god.” 

“I’m going to call you at lunch,” Eddie warns him. “Don’t forget your wallet.”

“You are so annoying,” Richie says happily, instead of what he wants to say, which is _I love you so goddamn much._

Eddie hangs up. Richie drags himself out of bed to start his day. 

The ten hours between his wake-up call and their flight to Arizona is mostly a mess of very little work and also very little preparation. It’s honestly mostly lost time, and Richie’s not sure where it goes, but he knows he doesn’t get a lot done. As promised, Eddie calls at lunch even though he’s working through it so he can leave early, and he asks Richie if he’s packed, and Richie lies that he’s started, and Eddie berates him for such a bald-faced lie. 

Around 3:00, Richie gets out his luggage. At 3:30, he frantically starts throwing stuff into it. At 3:40 he looks up the weather in Grand Canyon National Park and hastily adds more sweaters and socks. He double-checks that he has the necessary chargers and shit. He crams his feet into shoes and locks the door behind him. He unlocks the door, goes back in, grabs his wallet. He sends up fifteen prayers of thanks that Eddie will not murder him today. He turns off the lights. He leaves for the airport. 

When he gets there, Eddie is waiting for him in the lobby, ready to accost him. “You have your wallet?” is literally the first thing he says. 

“Obviously,” Richie scoffs, and then pretends to not be able to find it for a second just to see the flash of panic on Eddie’s face. When he laughs and pulls it out, Eddie punches him hard enough to hurt. 

“You dumb fuck, I literally would have just left you here,” he says. He’s still wearing his work clothes and, to Richie’s absolute glee, a fanny pack. Just like old times. He pulls his own wallet out of it, along with his phone, where he pulls up a screenshot of his digital ticket, and then also a printed version of the same ticket, as a completely unnecessary backup. “Didn’t you drive here? You can’t drive without your fucking wallet.”

“You can, actually, I’ve done it a hundred times,” Richie says. “I don’t suddenly lose my ability to drive if I forget my wallet at home.”

“All you do is stress me the fuck out on purpose every day,” Eddie says. “Get out your stuff.”

“Yes Mom,” Richie says, grinning. 

The airport is an airport. The flight is a flight. Nothing terrible happens, despite Eddie’s overwhelming belief that something will. They touch down in Phoenix at 8PM MST, and then get their rental car and drive another two hours to Sedona, where their airbnb is. By then it’s dark, and it’s midnight back home, and they’re going to have to wake up in a matter of hours if they want to see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon, so the plan is to go inside and pass the fuck out. 

But then they key in the passcode and get inside and poke around a bit, exhausted and travel-weary, and Eddie is the first to say, “Hey, is there like...a guest room? Somewhere?” 

“What?” Richie says, busy washing his face in the huge master bathroom. “Um, I don’t know, I didn’t really look at the listing—”

“There’s like, a little room that has a couch thing in it,” Eddie says, poking his head through the door. “Is that where I’m supposed to sleep?”

“No, for sure not,” Richie says automatically. “I’m not making you sleep on a couch. There’s gotta be another room in here somewhere, Bev’s not an idiot.”

Five minutes later, Richie is frantically looking up the listing and texting Bev, _what the fuck??? why did you get me and eddie a place with ONE BED._ And then he texts Stan to say, _FUCK YOU DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS YOU BASTARD._

And then he grins at Eddie and hopes it’s not as glaringly obvious as he thinks it is that he will actively lose his mind if he has to get into bed with Eddie Kaspbrak and says, “I guess I can take the couch thing?”

Eddie gives him a dry look. “This is _your vacation,_ Richie.”

“It’s our vacation!” Richie says. “And I already promised you didn’t have to sleep on a couch.”

Eddie looks at him, and then looks into the bedroom. His fingertip taps against the door frame. _Tap-tap-tap-tap._ “It’s a big bed.”

Richie swallows hard. It _is_ a big bed. A king. Three people could fit on it. “I mean. I guess.”

“I’m just saying,” Eddie says. “There’s no logical reason why either of us should sleep on the couch.” _Tap-tap-tap-tap._

 _The logical reason is that I will expire if you so much as look at me when we are both sleeping in the same bed,_ Richie wants to scream. But his throat is dry and hoarse and all he manages to get out is, “Uh-huh.”

Eddie shrugs. “Your choice. I’m too tired to think about this anymore.”

 _Fuck,_ Richie thinks, _fuck fuck fuck,_ fuck everything, he can’t make this decision! He can’t even think about this without his entire body feeling like someone’s filling it up with a kettle of boiling water. 

Eddie steps into the bathroom with him. Richie stares at him. “Whuh?”

Eddie frowns. “Get out,” he says. “I need to brush my teeth.”

Richie scrambles to leave the bathroom, and then feels like an idiot as Eddie looks at him strangely before closing the door after him. Richie tries to breathe like a normal person, and fails. 

He doesn’t get a response from either Bev or Stan, obviously, because it’s past midnight on a weekday where they are. Richie panics for several minutes, shucking his travel clothes and then just standing there, sweating, because he’d planned to sleep in his fucking boxers like he always does because he hadn’t planned on them _sharing a fucking bed._ And then Eddie comes out of the bathroom, fresh-faced and damp, and says, “So? What’s the plan?”

Richie holds his breath, because he’s standing in the middle of the room in just his boxers and that’s fucking _normal_ for him, okay, he’s spent tons of time around his friends in just his boxers, and Eddie isn’t batting an eye so he doesn’t know why he’s freaking out, but all he can do is open his mouth and say, “Haha, it’s too fucking late to think about this, I’m just gonna go to bed and you can decide for yourself if you want to cozy on up next to me.”

“This bed is practically the same size as my entire fucking bedroom,” Eddie says, horribly unbothered, because he’s not the one who dreamed about sharing beds with Eddie for his entire fucking childhood. He’s not the one who’s been tortured thinking about the sense memory of Eddie falling asleep pressed against him on the couch, of waking up with the warm weight of him still there, the familiar scent of him stuck in his nose for days afterwards. God. 

“Okay,” Richie says, and tries not to choke on it. 

Eddie gives him another weird look, and then digs some things out of his luggage and disappears back into the bathroom. Richie sits down on the bed and takes some measured breaths, and then crawls under the covers on one side and takes off his glasses and tries desperately to fall asleep before Eddie even comes back. 

But he can’t, of course, because Eddie returns from the bathroom a minute later, now in a fresh t-shirt and dark blue sleep shorts that are not even scandalously short but still remind Richie _viscerally_ of the pair of tiny mint green shorts Richie saw him in _three fucking weeks ago_ and has not stopped thinking about since. He thinks about them every single day, although very pointedly not when he jerks off, because that’s a firm rule that he lives by. Thou Shalt Not Jack Off To Mental Images Of Thine Best Friend. And if he does think about unrelated lean thighs and tight, round asses, well, that’s nobody’s fucking business. 

And Richie really needs to stop thinking about this, _right now,_ because Eddie is folding the clothes he travelled in and placing them neatly on the chair next to the dresser and turning off the light and then _getting into bed with him,_ and Richie is slamming his eyes shut and not opening them again, he _isn’t._

It’s very quiet in their big, dark room. Richie feels self-conscious about how loud he’s breathing. He shifts, and the bed creaks a bit, and then he stops moving and tries to convince himself he doesn’t need to get comfortable. He needs to fall asleep. 

“Goodnight,” Eddie says, belatedly, into the darkness. 

Richie laughs a little, and he’s not sure why. “Goodnight, Spaghetti Head.”

“God, I hate when you call me that.”

“No you don’t,” Richie says automatically. 

“Go to sleep.”

 _“You_ go to sleep.”

“Shut the fuck up, this isn’t a fucking slumber party.”

Richie laughs again. “Yes it is.”

“We need to be awake in a couple hours, oh my god. Shut up.”

“You’re talking more than I am,” Richie says, grinning. 

It’s quiet for a few long, heavy seconds, and then Eddie says, “You’re so fucking annoying,” and audibly turns over, and falls silent. But Richie could hear his smile. 

Richie doesn’t stop smiling until he falls asleep. 

What feels like approximately four minutes later, Eddie’s phone alarm is blaring, and Richie is wrenching his eyes open with a groan. 

“Fuuuuuuck,” Eddie says, voice hoarse, and Richie turns to look at him, squinting into the pitch fucking blackness of their room. Something shifts against Richie’s ribs, and he realizes it’s Eddie’s hand—he’s on his stomach, starfished across his side of the bed, and the knuckles of one outstretched hand are dragging against Richie’s shirt. Richie swallows thickly, and moves an inch away before Eddie can fully wake up, and then just looks at him, at the shadows of his face, his deeply furrowed eyebrows, his wildly messy bedhair. He looks cranky as hell, and Richie suddenly, desperately wants to keep him. He wants to keep him so bad. 

Instead, he rolls out of bed, directly onto the floor. It’s killer on the knees, but it’s just the right level of dramatic as he says, “Eddie, I’ll fucking kill you for telling me we need to see the fucking sunrise.”

“I hate everything,” Eddie says. “I’m going to fucking die.” He makes a miserable _aughhhhh_ sound, and Richie loves him pathetically. “Ask Bev if this stupid fucking airbnb comes equipped with a caffeine IV drip. I either want to be so wired I can taste colours or to die instantly of caffeine poisoning.”

“Stop being so fucking funny in the morning, it’s too early for this shit,” Richie says, still on his hands and knees next to the bed, trying to find the will to get up. His eyes feel like they’re filled with sand. His bones hurt. 

“Get up here and suffocate me then, you coward,” Eddie says. 

Richie grins. He holds onto the side of the bedframe and drags himself upright. “How soon do we have to be out of here?” 

Eddie groans and tries to suffocate himself with his pillow. His words come out muffled against it. “Thirty minutes if we want to catch the shuttle.”

“I’m going to go take a two-minute ice cold shower,” Richie says. “Maybe that will shock my system awake. Or maybe it will kill me.”

“Take me with you,” Eddie says, and Richie knows he means it about the dying part, but the idea of Eddie asking to shower with Richie makes his ears go hot. 

He clears his throat and says, “Not on the first date,” because he’s a moron, and then quickly leaves the room before he says something else idiotic. 

The entire morning is like that, simultaneously bone-grindingly horrible just by virtue of it being THREE IN THE FUCKING MORNING, and breathlessly painful as Richie watches Eddie drag himself out of bed, and the way his hair flops across his forehead, and the way he scrubs his hand over the stubble on his jaw but neglects to shave at such an ungodly hour. Richie’s seen Eddie in the morning before, but not like this, not miserable with drool drying at the corner of his mouth, not half-dressed and chugging coffee like his life depends on it, not slumped over the counter with one sock on groaning and cursing under his breath. And he’s so obnoxious and such a fucking whiner and Richie loves him so _fucking_ much. 

They’re in the car by 3:30, chewing on toast because even though neither of them are hungry, Eddie seems to think they’ll die if they don’t eat something. Richie drives—it’s another two hours from Sedona to the Grand Canyon—and Eddie passes out in the passenger’s seat about four minutes after promising he won’t. Richie doesn’t mind, casting him fond sidelong glances and humming along to the crackly music on the radio, staring out into the pitch black night. 

When they reach the park, it’s starting to get grey, but it’s still too dim to really see much of anything. Richie shakes Eddie awake, and they pull on their coats and hats because at this hour, at this altitude, it’s apparently fucking cold. Richie’s breath fogs in front of him as they stretch next to the car. They can’t see the actual canyon from the parking lot, but Richie knows it’s close, and he feels strangely tense at that thought, like a guitar string pulled taut, vibrating, knowing he’s so close to something so big. He feels like he’s holding his breath. 

There aren’t a lot of people waiting for the shuttle to the lookout at 5 in the fucking morning, but more than Richie would have thought. _He_ certainly doesn’t want to be here. But at the same time it’s so quiet, perfectly serene, and Eddie is next to him, eyes closed but face tipped up to the sky as they stand there, waiting. 

And then they get on the shuttle and it takes them on a road along the Southern Rim, and they get their first glimpse of the canyon in the hazy pre-dawn, and it’s— It’s fucking magical. They’re looking at it through the windows of the shuttle bus but it’s still, it’s _spectacular,_ the way the world drops away into a completely different landscape of rolling reds and golds, dull now in the half-light. Richie can’t stop looking, even though he knows he’ll have a much better view soon. It’s just. It’s like...nothing he’s ever seen before. 

“Wow,” Eddie breathes, close to Richie’s ear, trying to lean across him to look out the window. 

Richie hums, and enjoys the view as they lurch along the road, and soaks in the warmth of Eddie pressed up against him, and pretends he isn’t. 

They reach the lookout fifteen minutes before the sun is set to rise, and Eddie, having read a thousand travel blogs in preparation for this day, leads them along a rocky outcropping away from the handful of other people braving the early morning for the view. And then they’re there, looking out at the canyon as it spills down before them, breath fogging in front of them, and it’s. It’s fucking _gorgeous._ Richie wants to get out his phone and take pictures, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the vista in front of him. There’s a bit of fog lingering between the dips and rolls and crags of stone, and everything is glowing with soft, pre-sunrise light, and the colours are startling, but nothing is as incredible as how vast it is, how incredibly, incredibly endless, like it just goes on forever. 

And Richie feels so very small, but in such a good way. At any given moment, Richie feels like he is fucking up in a dozen different ways, like he is not quite enough and in other ways too much, like he’s doing something wrong even if he’s not sure what. But right now, here, on the edge of something so terrifyingly big, Richie feels like nothing could matter less than him, one single fucking person. And usually he hates that feeling, of not mattering, but this is...good. The world is so fucking big, and he’s so small and insignificant, and if he can just—if he can impact anyone in any small way, then isn’t that enough? Isn’t that all he can do? 

“Wow,” Eddie says again, standing next to him, eyes alight. Richie thinks, a little insanely, that this is the first time he’s seen anything close to as beautiful as Eddie fucking Kaspbrak. 

Richie swallows thickly and says, “Yeah. God.”

“What a fucking view,” Eddie says. 

Richie nods, and then they fall silent again, and just look. The light gets warmer, and rosier. The canyon stretches on and on in front of them, plunges down, down, down. It makes Richie dizzy—he’s not really scared of heights, but the drop is truly spectacular. He fights the urge to yell, to see if it would echo back. Usually he would, but the silence is so serene, so absolute. He doesn’t dare. 

They sit down against the rocks, after a while. The stone is cold beneath them, biting through Richie’s jeans, but he doesn’t care. He gets out his phone, snaps a few pictures that will inevitably fall short of seeing the real thing. He breathes in the sharp, cold air. He tries to take it all in. 

“Oh,” Eddie says beside him. “Look, Rich.”

Richie looks. A sliver of the sun is peeking up over the horizon. Sunlight pours out over the rim of the canyon, paints everything rosy gold. It’s breathtaking. Strangely, Richie feels like crying a little bit. 

“Wow,” Eddie says, a third time. He sounds just as blown away. His hand nudges against Richie’s knee. 

Richie swallows and says, “Guess I can die now.”

Eddie nods. “We’ve seen everything worth seeing.”

The sun climbs, bit by bit. Warm, beautiful sunlight drips over Eddie’s face. Richie watches the way he smiles, the way he soaks it all in, and his heart pounds against his ribs. He tears his gaze away, looks out again, watches the magic of the sunrise as it spills across the canyon in stunningly vibrant colours. He breathes in deep and feels so fucking lucky to be here, to see this, to not be alone here. To be here with Eddie. To have made it here, alive, together. 

And Richie loves him so, so much. He feels like he’s bursting with it, like it’s about to crest in his chest like the sun pouring up over the horizon, staining everything it touches the way his love is going to if he lets it, like blood bubbling out of a wound with every pump of his heart. He breathes in cold, sweet air, and he exhales the kind of love that hurts on its way out, too big for his throat. 

He reaches out on instinct, and is shocked when his hand bumps into Eddie’s, already waiting to meet him there. Richie swallows his tongue, and there’s a moment of hesitation, of indecision, but then Eddie wraps his hand around Richie’s fingers, and it’s ice cold, but it fills Richie with incredible warmth. He bites his tongue, and doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at their hands clasped between them, barely even dares to believe it’s real. And Eddie doesn’t say anything either, just holds his hand and watches the sunrise, and Richie’s eyes sting and his nose burns, and he thinks this is perfect, this is everything. There is nothing more than this. 

And he knows it means nothing, he knows Eddie doesn’t _mean_ anything by it, but at the same time he does, he means—he means _thank you for being here,_ and _thank you for experiencing this with me,_ and _everything here is so incredible and new and unreal and you are the only thing that is keeping me tethered here, you are the only thing that’s not a dream, you are the only thing that’s mine._

And that’s probably just Richie projecting, but he feels it so strongly, presses it into Eddie’s palm, drinks it up in return. He inhales, shivering. Eddie squeezes his hand. The sun rises. 

He opens his mouth, and there are so many words, but none of them come out. He doesn’t dare break this perfect silence. And even more than that, he knows he won’t say them. Not when just this, just...being this is already so much. It’s already more than enough. Saying anything would shatter this, ruin what he’s worked so hard to get. And it’s so good. 

He shuts his mouth, and smiles, and carves this into his memory so that he never forgets the press of Eddie’s palm into his, and the way the sunlight catches the edges of Eddie’s face, and the way Richie could kiss him, here, on his sun-stained mouth, but he won’t. He won’t. 

The moment will pass. But Richie will keep this memory tucked inside his chest forever. He holds onto Eddie’s hand tighter and tastes it.

***

The worst part about holding Richie’s hand at the Grand Canyon is not knowing when he’s supposed to let go.

It’s not that Eddie feels weird about it, exactly. It’s—it’s the Grand Canyon. You’re allowed to be a little gay at the Grand Canyon, Eddie thinks. That’s a rule. He had just—he had felt so much, sitting there with Richie, watching the sunrise, the helpless spectator to this incredible beauty, and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from reaching out. Something that usually feels so big felt so small in the face of this astonishing grandeur. 

But now they’re just sitting here on the rocks and the sun has risen fully and Eddie isn’t sure when he’s supposed to let _go._

He lets his grip go slack between them, but Richie doesn’t drop his hand, and neither does Eddie. They just kind of limply continue holding hands, and don’t say anything, and don’t take their eyes off the view. Eddie wants to let go. He wants to lift his phone and take a picture of Richie’s profile like this, looking out across the Grand Canyon, limned in gold, breathless and beautiful. But he can’t tear himself away from the feeling of Richie’s hand in his, familiar and grounding but also new and exciting and terrifying. They don’t do much hand-holding. Ever, really. Richie’s hands are big and square and rough and Eddie wants to drag his fingertips over every inch of them, feel each crease and line, the bump of each knuckle, the curve of his palm. He wants to press his mouth to the center of them and breathe it in. 

These feelings are...electric, startlingly scary, but he lets himself have them, just for now. He’s only started to allow his thoughts to coalesce beyond the vague desire for closeness in the past month or so. Usually that just means stuff like this, sitting close to him and pressing into a friendly touch. He thinks about warm, encompassing hugs, sometimes, especially when he sees Richie cradling Isabel in his arms and holding her close. He thinks, at times, about touching hands. This kind of sweet, agonizing contact. 

He doesn’t usually get much farther than that. He thinks it strays too close to the sick kind of pining, and the physicality of it makes him feel guilty, somehow. Like he’s violating Richie just by fantasizing about touching him. Kissing him. It makes him feel dirty, and he thinks that might be wrapped up in a few of his other issues, and he’s still working on those. 

But he thinks about it now, because the thought strikes him, clear and untarnished, and that’s rare for him. Any thought that feels clean, at this point, is a good thought. So he turns it over in his mind, keeps his breathing even. He thinks about turning Richie’s hand over and pulling it closer. Richie watching him, eyes ablaze, as Eddie drags his fingertips over sensitive skin. Bringing it up to his lips and pressing them to the warm skin there. He can imagine the sweat-salt taste of skin. The race of a pulse—his, or maybe Richie’s. The hitch of breath. He breathes in, like he would then. If he did it for real. One long drag of breath. His stomach turns, and not in a bad way. He wants. 

And then something buzzes, splitting the silence, and Richie’s hand jerks away so fast it gives Eddie whiplash. He stares at Richie, who stares back, eyes wide, and then his hand is scrabbling for his coat pocket and pulling out his phone, which vibrates for a second time. “Ah,” he says, face pink—but maybe that’s the early morning sunlight. “It’s just Bev. She says, um. Sorry for booking us a place with only one bed. She didn’t notice when she booked, she was only looking for a place that slept two.”

Eddie swallows thickly and picks up his own phone. So much for getting a picture of Richie. 

He has his own text from Bev—it just says, _I’m so sorry honey, I booked the place way before you ever told me anything, I promise I wasn’t trying to meddle 💕 Hope you’re alright and having a wonderful time, take pictures for me!_

Eddie blows out a short, strained breath, and tries to get a handle on his own embarrassment. “Yeah, same here,” he says. He shifts—his ass hurts from sitting on these rocks. “Should we, uh. Go?”

Richie looks at him a moment longer, chewing on his lip, and then turns back to the view and says, “Couple more minutes. Let’s take some pictures.”

So they stand up, and they take pictures on their phones, and Richie asks Eddie to take one of him, standing with his back to the canyon, hands in his coat pockets, dragging his hat off his head and fucking with his hair. He gives Eddie a little smile, shy, like he’s embarrassed to want photographic evidence that he visited one of the wonders of the world. 

Eddie licks his lips, and takes the picture, and wonders how he might get it from Richie without inevitably making it weird. 

Richie takes his phone back, smiles gratefully. “Maybe we should get one of both of us, huh? As a keepsake.”

“Otherwise we might forget who we went with,” Eddie says with a nod, and it makes Richie huff out a laugh. 

So they stand there together, close enough to the edge of the cliff that it makes Eddie feel a little dizzy, and Richie snaps a couple selfies of the two of them, and Eddie relishes in their closeness, pressing into his side because he can, because he has an excuse. And then Richie lowers his phone, and Eddie steps away, because he has to. He has to. 

They pull themselves away a few minutes later, and trek a bit along the trails surrounding the lookout, even though the view remains largely the same. When the next shuttle comes, they get on it, and let it cart them back to the Visitor’s Centre. 

“Maybe we can come back,” Richie says as they head towards their rental car in the parking lot. “Do some hiking or whatever. See it again before we leave.”

Eddie hums, nods. “We could do that now, you know.”

“Eddie,” Richie says seriously. “I know you slept two extra hours in the car on the way here, but I woke up at 3 in the morning. I’m about to literally drop dead at any second.”

Eddie has to laugh. “Alright. Should I drive, then?”

“I can do it,” Richie says quickly, backtracking. 

“Richie, get in the fucking car. I’m not going to die in a car accident on _vacation.”_

Richie grins, and gets in. 

He only sleeps for about half of the drive back to Sedona. The rest of the time he’s trying to find songs he knows on the radio, singing softly under his breath, and texting Stan, and talking about all the things he wants to do on this trip. They have three more nights here before heading back Monday, and there are a few parks and things Richie wants to visit while they’re here, sights he’d like to see. There’s some kind of fucking...UFO tour he can’t stop talking about, and energy vortexes or something, and Eddie just rolls his eyes and nods along, because this is Richie’s trip and he can do whatever the fuck he wants. And Eddie will go with him, the way he’s always gone with him. 

By the time they reach their airbnb, easing the car around the little girl chasing bubbles blown by her father to get into the driveway, Eddie is _desperate_ for a nap. But it’s also 9am, and he’s fucking hungry, so they toast some bagels they find in the fridge and eat them at the kitchen table, and Richie talks with his mouth full about hot tubs because there’s one in the back yard, and also some more about UFOs because he apparently can’t get enough of that. 

And then Eddie finishes his second breakfast of the day and says, “Anyway, I think I’m going to—” at the same time that Richie says, “So, time to pass out—” and they both look at each other and palpably remember the same thing:

One fucking bed. 

But Eddie decided, yesterday, that making a big deal out of it is fucking weirder than just pretending it’s normal, and if he gives up the charade now it’ll be _so_ fucking obvious, so he just bites his tongue, and forces a smile, and says, “Well. Our love suite awaits.”

Nope. That’s worse. That’s so much worse. He shouldn’t have fucking said anything. 

But Richie just coughs out a laugh, and then keeps coughing, because he’s still eating his fucking bagel, and Eddie snorts, and smacks his back as he stands up, and then beats a hasty retreat to their room to change back into his sleep clothes so that he can fucking nap. 

“I can just nap on the couch thing!” Richie calls from the kitchen. 

“I’m not scared of you stealing my fucking virtue, Richie!” Eddie calls back, because he worries that Richie worries about that, sometimes. That he makes people uncomfortable. Especially now, after coming out. He doesn’t want Richie to think he’s scared of sharing a bed with him. 

He is, of course. But not for the reason Richie might think. 

He tugs the curtains closed, casting the room into gloomy half-light, and then climbs into bed. It’s huge, and luxurious, and Eddie _is_ tired, albeit a little keyed up from thinking about sleeping with Richie too much. He sinks into it, and sighs. 

A few minutes later, Richie creeps in. Eddie pretends to be asleep, and watches guiltily through his eyelashes as Richie tugs off his clothes. He keeps his t-shirt on, but it rides up when he pulls his sweater over his head, and Eddie’s breath catches in his throat at the sight of the strip of skin it reveals at his stomach. Which is fucking stupid. Eddie’s seen Richie shirtless, _recently,_ especially with Richie’s special dedication to skin-to-skin with Isabel. But he gets riled up anyway, deep in his gut, like a fucking repressed maiden. 

Richie turns towards the bed, and Eddie snaps his eyes shut and feigns sleep like his life depends on it. The bed dips as Richie climbs in. For a moment, Eddie allows himself to yearn. Just a little. 

He falls asleep easily, in spite of everything, and by the time he wakes up again, maybe two hours later, Richie is already up and walking around the house. Eddie drags himself out of bed and gets dressed again, and Richie smiles at him when he walks out into the living room, standing at the kitchen island, picking at an orange while he scrolls through something on his phone. Eddie falls into an armchair and steals glances at him, and thinks, again, about kissing him. Holding Richie’s hand at the Grand Canyon really fucked him up, he thinks. He gave himself an inch, and his brain is trying to take a fucking mile. That little bit of contact ignited something in him, and now, viscerally, he wants more. 

He tries, really hard, to shut that down hard and fast. He’s not going to sit around fantasizing about his best friend right in front of him. He’s not. 

But regrettably, he can’t stop his brain from desperately supplying him with vivid mental images of a warm body pressed against his, strong arms wrapped around him, a mouth on his. Eddie hasn’t been kissed in...a long time. A really long time. And never by a man. But he can picture it so clearly, the rasp of stubble under his lips, the cut of a strong jaw against his palm. _God._ Okay, nope. He’s done, he’s not going there anymore. 

He gives himself a little pat on the back for making so much progress, though. Look at him! Fantasizing about a man—about Richie—and not even freaking the fuck out. Maybe it’ll hit later, maybe he’s still too nap-drunk to have a panic attack. But no matter what, he’s proud of himself. Four months ago Eddie couldn’t even admit to himself that he was in love with him. Now he’s having tentative little domestic fantasies and shit. Fuck yeah. 

“Hey, Eds,” Richie says suddenly, and it makes Eddie jump, heart rabbitting. 

“What,” he says, a little snappishly. 

Richie gives him a strange look. “Are you okay?”

Eddie’s cheeks feel hot, and he hopes it’s not painfully obvious that he’s flustered. “Yeah, sorry. I was a little...in my head. What’s up?”

Richie peers at him thoughtfully, and Eddie wants to shy away from his gaze, wants to hide, but in the end he just says, “You wanna go see a big-ass rock? And then maybe head into town for some food?”

Eddie pauses to take a steadying breath. His therapist taught him to do that. That people can wait for a second, if he’s feeling off-center. He smiles. “Yeah, Rich. Sure.”

Richie grins, claps his hands together like Eddie has given him a gift by agreeing. Sometimes, Eddie feels so fucking happy just to be in love with him. 

They head out twenty minutes later, and drive to Table Top Mountain, a huge red rock formation that juts out of the desert in towering ridges. It’s a 4-mile trek around the trail that loops around it, but neither of them are really up for that much hiking, so they just go part of the way down, to one of those weird energy vortexes that Richie keeps talking about. It’s a bit of a scramble up a rocky slope to get there, and Richie swears and huffs and puffs dramatically, claiming he hasn’t done this much exercise since high school gym class, but he makes it up no problem, and Eddie pretends not to be looking at his straining biceps as he hauls himself up to the hilltop. 

They hang out there next to some twisted trees for a while, while Richie pretends to do deep breathing exercises and draws the attention of some annoyed yogis. Eddie sits on the ground and rolls his eyes and tries not to smile too obviously. It’s his job, after all, to not encourage Richie too much. 

Once they start getting too hungry, they head back for the car, drive into town to scout out a restaurant for lunch. It’s a gorgeous day out now that they’re not 7,000 feet above sea level and it’s not 6 in the morning, so they get takeout and eat it on a stone bench in the quaint courtyard of Tlaquepaque Art & Crafts Village. There are people milling around the streets on every side, tourists and snowbirds here to escape the encroaching winter in northern states, and Eddie people-watches contentedly as he eats, half-listens to Richie as he rambles aimlessly. It’s a pleasant buzz in his ear, familiar and warm against the backdrop of chatter and barking dogs and crying babies. 

“Oh, hey,” Richie says, and Eddie hums vaguely, but Richie repeats, “Hey. Eddie.”

“What?” Eddie says, looking up from his almost-finished chicken and bean tostada. 

Richie is pointing across the courtyard. “Is that the kid from next door?”

Eddie looks. There’s a little girl, maybe five or six—fuck if Eddie knows—crouching next to the wall of a shop, bawling her eyes out. It’s hard to tell, with her curled in on herself and red and snotty-faced, but he does think he might recognize her. He was nervous about hitting her with his car that morning on the sidewalk. “Oh,” he says. “It could be.”

“She doesn’t look very happy,” Richie says lightly, but his tone is laced with concern. Eddie likes that about Richie—loves that about him. He worries about people. He _cares_ about people. “Should I go check on her?”

“I’m sure her dad or whatever is around here,” Eddie says uncertainly, remembering a man with her earlier as he looks around. There are a few people glancing at the little girl as they walk by, but none of them are lingering. And she’s really working herself up now, wiping at her face messily, hiccuping out sobs. Her dark little pigtails bob as she looks around desperately. 

“I’m gonna go check on her,” Richie says, and gets up, leaving his half-finished meal on the bench. 

Eddie stays there for a moment, frozen as he watches Richie cross the courtyard, and then gets up in a rush to follow him, tossing his food into the garbage as he goes. 

“Hey,” Richie is saying as he crouches down in front of the girl, making himself as small as he can when he’s six foot fucking two and three times as wide as she is. “Hello. Are you okay?”

The girl sniffles, and coughs, and wipes her face with the back of her arm, watching him warily. 

“Hi,” Richie says again, voice gentle. Eddie recognizes that voice. He uses it with Isabel all the time. “My name is Richie. Are you looking for someone?”

The girl looks a little terrified, but she nods jerkily. 

“Okay,” Richie says. “It’s okay. I’ll help you find them.”

The girl hiccups, and pulls up the skirt of her dress to wipe snot on it, and says tremulously, “Are you the police?”

Richie laughs a little. “No, I’m not the police. We’ll find the police if we can’t find your parents or someone you know, though, okay?”

“Okay,” the girl says. 

Richie shifts a little, just getting his balance, but it makes the girl twitch nervously. Richie holds up both palms and says, “Hey, it’s okay. I won’t even touch you, okay? Is it okay if I sit here with you? I’ll ask my friend Eddie to go see if he can find someone for you. Who are you with?”

“My dad,” the little girl says. 

“Alright. Eddie will go see if he can find your dad.” Richie shoots him a look, and Eddie nods, but doesn’t move. “Do you know where he might be?” 

“I don’t know,” the girl says, starting to cry afresh. “I can’t find him.”

“That’s okay. How long have you been lost?” Richie asks gently. 

“I don’t know,” the girl blubbers. “I just wanted to look at the—at the fountain and—and now I’m lost—”

“Oh, yeah, that happens to me all the time,” Richie says with a nod. “So scary, right? But I always get found again. I’m sure your dad is looking all over for you.”

The girl nods hesitantly, and then Richie starts doing a silly impression of a harried dad looking for her, waving his hands around and craning his neck, _ahhhhhhhh,_ and the girl, tear-tracks still staining her face, gives a soft, watery giggle. 

Eddie swallows thickly and wrenches himself away. He’s supposed to be _helping,_ not dying over how sweet Richie is with kids. 

It takes him under a minute to find the dad, who looks exactly as Eddie would expect, panicked and frenzied as he looks into shops, bumping into people, calling, “Lucy? _Luce?”_

“Hey,” Eddie says, waving at him. “Are you looking for a little girl?”

The man stares at him like he’s a ghost. “Yes. My daughter.”

Eddie smiles. “We found her.”

The reunion between father and daughter is truly sweet, as he sweeps her up into his arms and hugs her tightly, scolding her for wandering away and apologizing for not holding onto her in the same breath. He kisses her wet, snotty face, and buries his nose in her hair, and promises he’ll always find her. 

And then he turns to Richie, who's watching with a smile, and says, “You’re the person who found her?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, scratching the back of his head. “I saw her crying over here and thought, you know. I should probably make sure she’s okay.”

“Thank you so much,” the man says breathlessly. “Oh my god, I was losing my mind—”

Richie waves him off. “Oh, no problem. I was just, you know. Trying to help without anyone thinking I was trying to kidnap her, haha. So I didn’t want to, like, move her or anything.”

“Yeah, no, thank you so much. Thank you.” The man hugs his daughter even tighter. “I’m Mark, by the way. This is Lucy.”

Richie grins and holds out a hand for him to shake. “Richie,” he says. “I think you’re our neighbour? We saw you this morning on the street.” He jerks his thumb back at Eddie, but doesn’t introduce him, and Eddie doesn’t want to cut in, so he hangs back, lets Richie do the talking. It’s always been easiest to let Richie to do the talking. 

“Oh, really?” Mark laughs. “What a coincidence. Are you just visiting, or—?”

They chat for a while, and Eddie doesn’t interrupt, standing by kind of uselessly as they talk about where they’re from, what they’re doing here. Mark and his daughter are here to visit his parents, he says. And to see some sights. And then Eddie zones out a bit, thinking about the food Richie left on the bench and if it’s still there, but he snaps instantly back to attention when he hears Richie laugh, loud and distinctive. Eddie looks at him in surprise, sees his head thrown back with the force of it, and this Mark guy grinning, proud of having elicited such a reaction. 

Immediately, something dark curls in Eddie’s gut. He has always, _always_ treasured the ability to make Richie laugh like that. Ever since they were _kids._ And now this guy just fucking...saunters in and does it within a couple minutes? Fuck that shit. 

It’s possible that Eddie’s annoyed because Mark is fucking handsome, in his 30s with dark hair and dark eyes and a sharp jaw, broad-chested and lean. He has a couple inches on Eddie, too, and the kind of easy confidence of someone who never got bullied growing up. Fuck him. 

And he keeps smiling, and laughing a little as they talk, and Richie is smiling and laughing back, and Eddie’s stomach drops through the pavement as he claps Richie on the arm and lets it linger there as he says, “Seriously, man, thanks again, I really owe you. Being a single parent is a _bitch.”_

Eddie pretends not to notice the way Richie’s eyebrows quirk up at that. “Yeah,” he says easily, “no kidding.”

“You got kids?” Mark says, tipping his head to the side. “You seem good with them.”

And usually, Eddie knows from experience, Richie says _yes_ to this question. He usually loves pretending that Isabel is his, calls her his baby in public, lets the entire fucking Twittersphere think he has a child. Will actively whip out his phone to show people pictures of her. Eddie anticipates it. 

But instead, Richie kind of laughs, and Mark’s hand is only now slipping away from his arm, and he looks bashful as he says, “Ah, no, um. Just a goddaughter. But I babysit a lot.”

“Oh,” Mark says, eyes bright. “That’s sweet.”

Richie grins, stupidly shy, and says, “Yeah?”

And Eddie wants to—fuck, he wants to stomp away and stop looking at them. He wants to find a wall to smack his head into. He wants to fucking … _god,_ he doesn’t even know, he wants to _cry,_ which is fucking _stupid._

He doesn’t get to be like this, about this. He doesn’t get to be...jealous, or moody. Because Richie isn’t _his._ Eddie just said, a matter of weeks ago, that he wasn’t even sure he _wanted_ Richie to love him back. And yeah, sure, he’s been trying to make headway in that area since then, and he’s been thinking about what it might be like for someone to want him again, but he wasn’t, he wasn’t _committed_ to the idea yet. He barely even lets himself think about it. 

And yet here he is, getting upset like a child whose crush likes someone else, petty and angry and bitter, and just. _Fuck._

It’s not fair, because he’s not Eddie’s. He was never Eddie’s. They’re—they’re best friends. And this is just some random guy on the street who made Richie laugh. 

But it slaps Eddie in the face, that one day it might be some other guy, and Richie will be happiest with someone who isn’t him. And it’s absolutely shitty of him, but Eddie hates the idea of that, hates how it makes him feel cold and scared and alone. Hates that at any moment, it could be too late. That he might already be too late. 

_For what?_ he asks himself bitterly. _As if you ever had a fucking chance._

Richie laughs again, and where it’s usually a balm to Eddie’s nerves, today it’s a punch to his gut. God. _Fuck_ his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHECK OUT [THESE](https://twitter.com/thebrightmess/status/1261685726397292545) [ARTS](https://twitter.com/haruspecks/status/1262354731219005440) TWO PEOPLE DID OF EDDIE IN LAST CHAPTER'S LADIES NIGHT OUTFIT HOOOOOOOOO i truly lost my mind thank you so much to everyone who has ever drawn fanart for a fic that is my FUCKING life blood


	10. Chapter 10

Richie would give anything, he thinks, to wake up to Eddie Kaspbrak every morning. 

Their second morning in Arizona is much gentler than the first. They have nowhere to be, no schedule to stick to. No alarm set, as far as Richie knows. He wakes up slow and easy, warm but deeply comfortable in this unfamiliar bed, and doesn’t bother opening his eyes just yet. He can tell it’s light in their room, a soft rosy light through his eyelids, but he doesn’t want to face it just yet. 

Yesterday, he woke up to Eddie’s hand against his ribs. Today, as consciousness surfaces, he can feel pressure against his sternum, fingers tangled in the fabric of his shirt, holding onto him. And there’s another hand curled high around the back of his neck, woven into the curls of hair at his nape. And it’s so...so easy, somehow, so natural, even though Richie doesn’t think he has ever woken up like this, with someone reaching out for him, touching him. Wanting to touch him. But it feels… _so_ fucking good, it makes his throat thick with want, even though he knows none of this was conscious, that this couldn’t have happened on purpose. 

He knows he should pull away. He knows it’s...it’s wrong for him to not pull away, to take advantage of what Eddie has done in his sleep, rolled close to him and reached out and latched onto the closest warm body. But he wants it so badly, and it feels so good. He can’t help but sink into it, drowsy and warm and safe, and think about what it would be like to have this every day, in a different life. 

He needs to stop thinking about it, because he’ll never fucking recover if he lets himself fall too deep, but he isn’t sure there’s a way out at this point. And he just wants to have this. Just for a little while. 

He lets his eyes flutter open. Eddie isn’t obscenely close to him, they’re not wrapped up in each other. But his face is all Richie can see, pressed into the sheets between their pillows—Eddie moved towards _him._ And he looks so soft, here, like this. He hasn’t shaved since before they left on this trip—his jaw and cheeks are dark with stubble. His hair is a mess, soft and wild and a little curly at the ends. Richie’s hands are curled between them, and one of them presses, just gently, against Eddie’s chin. Richie can feel his rhythmic breaths against his knuckles. It makes him want to do something insane. 

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t. He just lies there, and breathes, and tries not to blink too much, because he doesn’t want to miss a second of this. If he doesn’t get to have every morning, he’ll at least have this morning, this gift, getting to experience it once. Eddie’s hand curled in his shirt. Curled in his hair. Holding him close. Eddie, asleep, comfortable, breathing gently. Richie can pretend so easily that this is something else. But he doesn’t. Richie knows his place. So he just enjoys this for what it is. And aches, maybe, a little. 

He inhales, and savours, and then, between one breath and the next, Eddie’s eyes open. 

It’s nothing dramatic. They don’t snap open, he doesn’t jerk awake. They just...open. And then he’s looking at Richie, and Richie’s looking at him, and there’s this moment of...shivering silence. Their eyes are locked. Richie thinks, insanely, that something is going to happen. He doesn’t know what, but the tension is unbearable.

Eddie breathes in, a steadying breath, an anticipatory breath. And then a door slams somewhere—next door—and it shatters the moment. Eddie wrenches back, startling so hard Richie feels it, both hands yanking back. Richie feels like he’s been slapped in the face. 

“Eds—” he says immediately, because more than anything, his first instinct will always be to protect him, to make sure he’s alright. That hasn’t fucking changed. 

But Eddie is shaking his head, sitting up in their bed, running a hand through his wild hair. He clears his throat and says, too loudly for the still morning air, “God, what time is it? I’m gonna go take a shower.”

“Eddie,” Richie says again, because he’s eager to fix this, somehow. To tell him it’s okay, that he knows it was an accident, that he knows it meant nothing. He knows, he knows, he knows. 

But Eddie is already getting up, moving across the room to the dresser where he’d spent all evening compulsively putting away their clothes like it’s a crime to just leave it in their luggage. He’s scrambling to pull stuff out at random, face red, and then he’s disappearing into the bathroom, and then everything is very still and quiet again, and Richie is still lying there in their bed, wondering what he did wrong. 

He sighs, and rubs his hands over his face, and thinks of course. Of course. He shouldn’t have expected anything else. 

So much for _“I’m not scared of you stealing my fucking virtue.”_

By the time Eddie comes back from his shower, Richie is still in bed, but at least he’s sitting up and wearing his glasses and scrolling through apps on his phone morosely. He sent the group chat some photos last night, and Patty’s responding to them now with lots of hearts and sparkly emojis. Richie is wondering if maybe he should delete the selfie on the Grand Canyon off his phone, just to avoid the sad inevitability of him looking at it longingly six months from now. 

But then Eddie is stepping back into the room, and Richie is looking up at him, and he’s—he’s towelling off his hair, damp and soft, and he’s _wearing Richie’s shirt._ His shorts are his own, soft and heather-grey, but he’s absolutely wearing Richie’s fucking shirt, and it’s enormous on him—it’s big on _Richie_ —and he’s wearing it tucked into his waistband, and it has a huge, goofy picture of Kermit the Frog on it, and. He must have just grabbed it from the drawer in his rush to get out of the room, must have thought it was his own plain white shirt, but now he’s wearing it, here, in their room. He’s barefoot in the soft morning sunlight and wearing Richie’s clothes, and his hair is damp and messy and lovely and his skin is pink from his shower, and he looks embarrassed but stubborn, like he knows this was a stupid mistake but he’s going to play it off like it’s no big deal if it kills him. And he _still_ hasn’t shaved and something about that kills Richie. 

The thing is, you’d be hard-pressed to catch Eddie Kaspbrak looking anything other than perfectly put together. This is a guy who wore his work clothes on a plane for no fucking reason. Eddie’s hair, out in public, is always gelled back into obedience. His face is always clean-shaven. His clothes are always pressed and neat. His socks always match. The way he presents himself is a type of armour, like he can protect himself by looking like he has his shit together. 

But here, in the safety of this space he shares with Richie, he’s soft and messy and...wearing a Kermit the Frog shirt that doesn’t even belong to him. And Richie gets to see this unkempt, unguarded version of him. And he knows Eddie’s still putting on airs, still fighting to keep his composure, but it’s different. Other people don’t get to see this raw, vulnerable Eddie. The other Losers do, sometimes. But not the rest of the world. 

And right now there’s no one else here. It’s just Richie, still in bed, still remembering Eddie’s fingers curled in his hair. And Eddie, tugging on the front of Richie’s shirt, clearly not quite sure if he’s allowed to be wearing it but not wanting to admit he made a mistake. 

Richie swallows hard. “That’s a good look on you.”

Eddie’s head snaps up. His ears are red. “Yeah, I. Uh. I’m going for something...new.”

God, Richie loves this obnoxious man and his unwillingness to admit he did something embarrassing. “Yeah, I can tell. Very...avant-garde.”

Eddie snorts, and rolls his eyes. He finishes towelling off his hair and drops the towel into a laundry basket. The shirt honestly looks a lot better on Eddie than it does on Richie, tucked in like that, highlighting his narrow waist. Richie doesn’t even remember packing it. He’d let Eddie keep it forever if he thought Eddie would keep wearing it. He’d do a lot of crazy things to keep Eddie in his clothes. 

God. Anyway. 

“So,” Richie says, maybe too loudly. “More hiking today? There’s a lot more big rocks to see, yet.”

Eddie laughs softly. “You can’t get enough of those big rocks, huh.”

“If you don’t want to, we don’t have to,” Richie says quickly. “We can find something else. I know it’s, like, summer weather but we could sit in the hot tub or something.”

“No, we can do whatever,” Eddie says. “I know you wanted to see the sights and shit.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’m a big boy, I can go climb some rocks on my own. Or I can, I dunno, I can ask Mark or something.” They’d chatted across the street last night, after parting ways at Tlaquepaque. Eddie had gone inside after a few minutes, but Richie had enjoyed the neighbourly friendliness—he thinks Mark might be down to hang out a bit if he has nothing else up. 

Eddie’s face shutters visibly. He’s not looking at Richie anymore. “Oh,” he says. His hands smooth down the front of Richie’s shirt. “Yeah, I mean. If you want to.”

Richie feels like he’s misstepped. “I just don’t want to, like, drag you around Arizona if you’d rather stay here in the nice air conditioned house. Or like, if you want me to get out of your hair for a bit.”

Eddie frowns. “When did I ever imply that?”

Richie blinks, shrugs. “I don’t know. You’ve been in my constant presence for like 40 hours now. Everyone has a Richie Limit.”

“Not me,” Eddie says, so quickly it sounds like he’s snapping at Richie. He huffs, drags a hand through his damp hair. “Just. You don’t have to… I don’t need a break from you. You’re not too much for me. Ever.”

Richie gapes at him. He can’t help it. “I— Oh.” He flounders, chest squeezing. He tries, kind of desperately, not to let it show how hard that hits him. It just—it’s pathetic, right? To react this strongly. And Eddie is looking at him again, challenging, and it’s unbearable. “I. Thanks, Eds. You’re...definitely the only person to have ever said that.”

“It’s the truth,” Eddie says, like he’s mad about it. “And anyone who doesn’t think so is a fucking pussy.”

That startles a laugh out of Richie, as bewildered as he is about all this. “Thanks, Spaghetti Man. I didn’t know you were so eager to defend my honour.”

Eddie’s neck flushes pink. “Shut the fuck up, you can still be annoying as shit even if I like spending time with you.”

“Oh, now you _like_ spending time with me?” Richie says, because he does _not_ know when to keep his fucking mouth shut. “That’s practically like third base, emotionally.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie says. “I’m never being nice to you again.”

Richie laughs, because he thinks if he doesn’t, he might really fucking cry. “I like spending time with you too,” he says, before Eddie can stomp grumpily out of the room. “You know. Just so we’re clear.”

Eddie huffs. “Well, you fucking better.”

Richie grins at him crookedly. “Look at us,” he says. “We’re going all the way and it’s not even nine in the morning.”

“Oh my god,” Eddie says, turning around abruptly. “I’m going to make breakfast.”

Richie’s glad when he leaves. He didn’t know how many more words he could say before one of them was something he couldn’t take back. 

He drags himself out of bed a few minutes later, takes his time in the bathroom to give himself—and Eddie—time to cool off. He thinks they need it, after that...who the hell knows kind of start to the day. 

The rest of the morning goes by fairly normally. When Richie finally makes his way to the kitchen, Eddie is just fishing some toast out of the toaster, and there are eggs poaching on the stove. They eat together, mostly in silence, as Richie catches up on some Twitter drama and Eddie...checks the stocks or whatever the fuck he does in the mornings while he frowns at his phone. When Richie asks him what he’s typing so furiously under the table, Eddie quickly puts it down and says, “Nothing. I’m just talking to Patty.”

“Oh,” Richie says. “Tell her I love her and to give Belly three hundred kisses for me.”

Eddie smiles and rolls his eyes and eats the rest of his food. 

They end up making the forty-minute drive down from Sedona to Montezuma Castle, a big old stone building built into the side of a cliff. It’s actually really fucking cool, and Richie loves it there, looking at the ruins, learning about the history. Richie hasn’t been in school in a really long time, and his career as a bad comedian didn’t really demand continuous education, but he liked learning, as a kid. Was good at school, liked having something he knew he wasn’t a disappointment in. History was never his strongest area, but he took an art history course in university, and he’d liked it. 

“Ben would fucking love this,” he says, taking pictures on his phone. “How do you figure they got up there, Eds? In like, what, fucking...1000 BC.”

“1100 AD,” Eddie corrects, standing next to him with the pamphlet he picked up. He’s still wearing Richie’s Kermit shirt. If Richie looks at him too long, he feels like he has heatstroke. “I think they used ladders.”

“Wild,” Richie says with a grin. He knew that it was AD. But he likes it when Eddie corrects him. 

“Excuse me,” a voice says from behind them, and Richie turns to see a girl, maybe 20, standing there squinting against the sun. “Are you Richie Tozier?”

Richie flashes her a smile. “Sometimes I am.”

There’s a pause, and then Eddie says, “Then who the fuck are you the rest of the time?”

Richie laughs, and the girl laughs, too. “Shut the fuck up, don’t be funnier than me in front of my fans.”

“Who said I’m a fan?” the girl says, lips quirked. 

“Aw, see Eds? Now she’s your fan instead. You do this every time.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, and Richie looks back to the girl. “Something I can do for you?”

The girl hesitates, then shakes her head. “No. Just wanted to see if it was you.”

“It’s me!” Richie says, throwing up some jazz hands. “Unless you’re about to dox me or something. In which case, I’ve never heard of that unfunny bastard in my life.”

The girl snorts. Richie doesn’t think she _is_ a fan, and it kind of hits him, like a smack to the face, how little that matters to him. In the past—for so much of his life—all he cared about was...people laughing at him, people looking at him. And saying the right things or the right _wrong_ things, whatever it took to get people’s attention. In the past, it would have killed him that she doesn’t seem to care about him. Ambivalence was worst of all. But he _doesn’t_ care, not...anymore. Not here, on vacation, where he’s not Richie Tozier, Comedian. Where he’s just...Richie. And being funny isn’t the be-all, end-all of his identity. 

He’s learned a lot about the joys of not being known, these past few years. And even more than that, he’s learned a lot about...things that actually matter to him. Things that actually matter about who he is. He knows more about who Richie Tozier _is_ , and who the people are whose opinions really count. 

His phone vibrates in his hand, and he looks at it automatically. It’s from Stan, an attachment. He says a quick goodbye to the girl before ducking away to look at it. 

It’s a picture of Isabel, lying on a blanket in the grass in their backyard, wearing one of the pairs of shoes Richie bought her a few months back, and a little romper with a big sun on the front. She’s smiling wide for the camera, her chubby cheeks round with joy, and suddenly Richie needs to see her more than he needs anything else in the world. He FaceTimes Stan right then and there. 

“Hey,” Stan says, picking up. “What’s up? Aren’t you, like, out somewhere?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, moving away from the crowd. He’s vaguely aware of Eddie following him. “Can I see Isabel? I think I’ll die if I don’t see her right now.”

Stan laughs. He’s outside, too—Richie can see the edge of his house behind him, can hear someone mowing a lawn in the background. “Yeah, sure. She’s in a great mood, she just woke up a few minutes ago.”

“I miss my baby,” Richie says mournfully, and a second later the screen is turning to Isabel on her blanket, kicking her legs happily. Richie feels a little weak in the knees just at the sight of her. “Hey, Belly Baby!” he says, and can’t help but grin as she looks up at him with wide eyes. “Hey! How’s my favourite baby girl? Oh my god, look at you. I think you’ve grown three inches since I saw you.”

“Three days ago?” Stan laughs in the background. 

“Definitely,” Richie says. “Hey. _Hi,_ Smelly Belly. I hope you’re being good. I hope you’re staying out of trouble and thinking happy, radical thoughts. Anti-capitalism, wage slavery, world domination, that kind of stuff.”

“Stop trying to indoctrinate my baby,” Stan says. 

“She’s _my_ baby, and she’s going to be woke as hell,” Richie says. He sighs at his screen. “I just want to _hold_ her. Stan, you better be holding her extra for me.”

“Yes, Richie.”

“Belly!” Richie sings, trying to get her attention as she looks away from the screen. “Belly Baby! Hey, stinky baby.” He moves his face super close to his phone, so that it’s comically huge on his screen and Belly is looking straight up his nose. She smiles up at him, and it lights Richie up inside. He babbles at her mindlessly, laughing at her surprised reactions, pulling dumb faces and using ridiculous voices. He’s in the middle of singing her a terrible pop song that he’s mostly replaced with her name when she kicks out her feet and hits the phone with her tiny fist and _laughs._

She laughs. Richie’s been enjoying her smiles and burbling sounds these past few months, but this is the first time he’s ever heard her laugh like this, a cascade of clumsy giggles, and Richie nearly loses his shit. His eyes go hot and start stinging, and he blinks hard and makes a weird sound automatically, does something stupid with his face, and she laughs again, delighted. “Oh my god,” Richie says dumbly. “Stan!”

“I know,” Stan says from behind the camera. “She thinks you’re funny.”

 _“Stan,”_ Richie says, overwhelmed with it. 

“This is one of her first real laughs,” Stan says. “Look at that.”

“Fuck,” Richie says, wiping his face messily. “Belly, I love you so much, I love you, I’ll see you soon okay?”

“Bells misses you too,” Stan says. “Say bye to Uncle Richie.”

“I love you,” Richie says again. God, forget that random girl who didn’t laugh at any of his jokes. Richie doesn’t need anything but this. “Bye, sweetheart.” He kisses his phone screen, even though Eddie’s told him a hundred times that it’s disgusting. 

“See you, Rich,” Stan says, voice warm. 

“Bye Stan. Thanks for letting me see her.”

“Of course,” Stan says, turning the phone back to his own face, smiling. “Have fun on vacation. Love you.”

“Yeah, love you too,” Richie says wetly, and hangs up. 

He lowers his phone, and Eddie is standing there, looking at him, smiling. And Richie is already full up with love, but something about Eddie’s little smile, soft and brave and warm and good, makes Richie want to absolutely lose it. And Eddie smiling at him shouldn’t make him feel like crying, but it _does._

 _I want this forever,_ he thinks, still clutching his phone where a baby laughed at him, looking into the face of the person he loves the most, has loved the longest. Sometimes he feels like Isabel has carved out the inside of his chest, stretched out his capacity for how much he can feel at one time, and right now he feels like he’s brimming with it, overflowing. He never knew he would care so little about what the general public thinks of him, and he never knew he would care _so much_ about this. 

“Hey,” Eddie says softly. “You okay?”

Richie fights a wobbly smile onto his face, but doesn’t reply. He honestly doesn’t know if he _is._ He’s not sure if this is...good, if this is sustainable, if he can keep going like this. Sometimes he thinks he can’t possibly contain all of these feelings for much longer. And he knows that whatever comes after that will be a complete and utter shitshow. 

But right now he just keeps his mouth shut and bleeds love all over, and he thinks _this is what I do best._ Not...make people laugh, not whatever dumb shit he does to make a living. _This,_ just. Fucking...loving people. Being absolutely fucking bursting with it. 

He thinks that’s not a bad thing to be.

***

Eddie has been having a fucking _day._

He woke up before Richie realized, he thinks. It was so fucking warm, and comfortable, and he knew opening his eyes and facing what happened, the fact that he could feel his hands curled in Richie’s shirt and his hair, would be hard and embarrassing. So he just...kept his eyes closed. He felt it when Richie woke up, heard the change in his breathing, felt him shift. He knew Richie was aware of their positions, and gave him time to pull away. He could feel the rapid beat of a racing heart, and couldn’t tell whose it was. Probably his own. 

But Richie didn’t pull away. He stayed exactly where he was, and Eddie lay there, trying to control his breathing, wondering what was happening. If Richie was having a fucking crisis, if he was...realizing things Eddie didn’t want him to realize. Seeing things Eddie didn’t want him to see. Or if he was just still fucking asleep somehow. 

He hadn’t wanted to open his eyes. It was so nice, lying there, touching Richie in a way he so rarely feels like he can. So much more intimate than holding hands at the Grand Canyon, breathlessly close. And it was terrifying, being so close, so...exposed. So transparent. But it felt so good. He didn’t want to open his eyes. 

But he had, without conscious decision, and there had been a moment, one heart-stopping second, where Eddie genuinely didn’t know what was going to happen. He didn’t know. The world felt full of possibility. 

And then a loud sound had startled him out of that dream, and everything came crashing down around him, the horror of letting himself be so fucking _obvious,_ and he’d had to scramble away from the evidence of his own mess. The shower he’d taken had been ice cold, both a punishment and a desperate grasp for some fucking _sanity,_ and coming out and seeing that he’d accidentally taken Richie’s shirt in with him had been a completely unneeded slap to the face. As if he needed help advertising that he’s completely in fucking love with his best friend. 

But as always, making a scene would just make things worse, and Eddie has _worn_ his friends’ clothes before and _not_ thrown a fit about it, so he tucked the fucking shirt into his shorts and pretended everything was fine like his life depended on it. And Richie didn’t call his bluff. So maybe it’s a good thing Eddie’s in love with a moron. 

And everything since then has also been a fucking disaster of Eddie being the world’s most obvious idiot, leaking his feelings everywhere every time he opened his mouth or even just… _looked_ at Richie. He can practically feel it seeping from his pores, all day long. 

He’s choking on it the entire time Richie is on FaceTime with Isabel, acting like a total moron in public just to see if he can make her smile, and then starting to cry instantaneously when she laughs for him. It hurts Eddie just to look at him, seeing him so full of love, so happy it looks painful. Hurts in a good way, mostly. This is one of Eddie’s favourite sides of Richie, emotional and affectionate and big-hearted. 

But Eddie’s been on edge since yesterday, since the Mark fiasco. And it doesn’t help that Richie keeps mentioning him, keeps looking across the street to the villa where Mark is staying, waving at him through the window. It’s not even _about_ Mark, it’s about—it’s about Richie eventually wanting something more, and not from Eddie. It’s about Richie choosing someone else. And it’s so shitty of Eddie to hate that. Isn’t that exactly the kind of person Eddie is bone-deep terrified of? Isn’t that the exact kind of poisonous, false love that Eddie swore he would never reproduce? Didn’t he swear he would learn from the love he’d had forced on him his entire life? 

So he keeps his fucking mouth shut. He’s not that same kind of monster. He _won’t be._

But he still hurts. 

After Montezuma, they go out and grab a bite to eat, and then they go for a short hike through the trails near their airbnb, taking in more gorgeous desert and red rock views. It’s warm out, but not blisteringly hot. Eddie still feels like he’s about to burst into flames every time Richie reaches out for his hand to help him clamber over unsteady rocks. 

They head back mid-afternoon, sweaty and tired. Richie is glowing, though, as if tiring himself out has somehow given him more energy, or like he’s soaked up the sun like a fucking solar panel. 

“You know, I actually kinda missed the desert,” he says, practically ping-ponging off the walls. “Living in LA was the fucking worst, and I don’t miss being sweaty and gross literally all the time, but it’s like. You know how Bill killed all his plants because they needed a lot of light and he didn’t have them by the window or some shit? And so Mike got him those low-light plants? I think I’m the high-needs plant. I can only thrive in the window.”

Eddie sits on the couch, feet tucked up under him, and smiles. “I think that’s just Vitamin D deficiency because you don’t go outside enough.”

“Maybe I need one of those swanky sunrooms,” Richie says. “So that I can sit in there like a cat in the winter.”

“Or you could just move somewhere sunnier,” Eddie says. 

Richie looks startled and offended. “What, _alone?”_

Eddie blinks. “I’d come with you,” he says, and then quickly corrects it to, “We’d come with you.”

“I’d have to uproot eight—no, nine with Belly—nine people, just to get a little more Vitamin D? No sir, I will tell my swanky sunroom and mainline some fucking multivitamins.”

Nine people. Richie would only move if he could take all nine Losers with him. And Eddie knew that—he feels the same way—they didn’t all move to the same city after Derry for no reason—but it still spreads warmth through his chest. 

“Well, good, because I’m not actually willing to fucking move to the desert,” Eddie says, instead of any of that. 

“Not even if I asked you to?” Richie says, moving to rummage around in the fridge. “Not even if I begged and pleaded?”

“I’m the low-light plant,” Eddie says. “And I don’t trust red states.”

“California’s blue!” 

“You said you hated LA.”

“I know but it’s the principle of the matter. If I asked you to move to a red state with me would you do it?”

“No,” Eddie lies. He knows he fucking would. Anywhere. In an instant. 

“What if I used my Eddie Kaspbrak eyes on you?”

Eddie looks up from his phone to send him a dry look. “Your what.”

“My Eddie Kaspbrak eyes! I practice them in the mirror after every shower.” Richie turns away from the fridge and takes off his glasses, and his eyes go huge and wide and sad and his eyebrows pinch inwards. 

Eddie chucks the TV remote at him. “Fuck off, I don’t look like that.”

Richie laughs raucously. “You do! They’re very effective, seriously. Look.” He draws closer, crouches on the floor so he can tip his head up towards Eddie and blink hig huge, myopic eyes and say, “Please won’t you move to the desert with me?”

“Stop,” Eddie says, biting back a smile as he throws a pillow at his face. “You look like a moron.”

“Please?” Richie says, crawling around the side of the couch like a dog, pushing his head against Eddie’s knees. “I think New Mexico is a blue state. What about Nevada?”

“Fuck off,” Eddie laughs, kicking at his shoulder. 

“Don’t you dream of our beautiful desert home?” Richie says, pressing closer obnoxiously, folding his arms on top of Eddie’s thighs and resting his chin there, still looking up at him through huge, unfocused eyes. “Wouldn’t you abandon the cold, city life to run away with me to the land of cacti and poisonous snakes?” 

Eddie swallows thickly, one hand curled around Richie’s shoulder as if to push him off his lap, but frozen in the face of it, his sweat-damp hair and open, earnest expression. He’s pressed up against Eddie’s legs, and Eddie knows it’s to be irritating, but it’s still...he’s so close, a solid weight against him, and. He’s looking up at Eddie and his expression is relaxing into something less cartoonish, more searching. Expectant. Eddie can barely breathe, looking down at him. His heart beats in his tongue. For a wild moment, he feels that same weightless anticipation as he did in the morning, that same impossible feeling that something could happen. Anything could happen. 

He wonders, in that moment, if he’s delusional. If he wants something so badly that he’s painting it across Richie’s face. Soaking every shared moment in his own wishful thinking. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know _how_ to know. 

And he thinks he should back off. He should figure out his shit. But he wants so desperately to reach out, and Eddie doesn’t know if that’s bad. If that’s selfish and wrong. 

He swallows again. Richie pulls back and sits on his heels and says, “Eds? You okay?”

Eddie blinks, and misses him so viscerally it feels feral. “Sorry. Yeah. I just—”

“No, it’s okay,” Richie says, moving farther away, and then hauling himself to his feet. “I was just, you know. Being a shithead. I didn’t mean to be, like. Weird.”

“You’re not,” Eddie says quickly. “I mean. You’re always weird. I was just—” He shakes his head. “Trying to remember if New Mexico is a blue state.”

Richie stares at him for a second longer, and then snorts, relaxing, sliding his glasses back on. “Fuck if I know.” He drags a hand through his hair, grimaces. “I should take a shower, huh?”

“Yes,” Eddie says. “I can smell you from here.”

“I’m a sweaty guy, that’s not my fault!” Richie says, but laughs. “Okay. I’m just gonna...go do that, then.”

“Good riddance,” Eddie says. 

“Fuck off,” Richie says with a grin, and retreats to their room. 

Eddie only relaxes once he’s out of sight, still feeling the lingering effects of...whatever that was. God, he’s a fucking mess today. 

He stays on the couch as he hears the shower start up, scrolling through newsfeeds on his phone. He feels tense, off-balance. He just needs to...settle. He needs to make it through the rest of this vacation without losing his fucking mind. 

He opens Twitter, and realizes he should probably stop searching Richie’s name all the time, because all of the fucking tweets under his recommended trends are about him—photos, opinions, gifs from his comedy specials, clips from interviews. Eddie knows he shouldn’t look at them, because half the time they piss him off, and the other half they make him want to scream. 

Today, his eyes are fucking glued to one that says, _i saw richie tozier in arizona today._

It’s an entire thread, and Eddie reads it frantically, worried it’ll be leaking something to the public, telling people where they are, saying something vile or exposing Richie somehow. But it’s not. It’s not that at all.

 **delaney** @dellaneyy_q  
_i even went up to him to make sure if was him, cuz he was wearing a hat and shit. he smiled when he saw me, and i totally panicked. i probably came off as a bitch tbh. and i wanted to ask for a pic, but he looked like he was on vacation, and i didn’t want to bother him (2/?)_  
|  
_idk he was just really sweet. i used to hate this motherfucker, no lie. his old comedy was such garbage. but my gf sent me his coming out set when bootlegs first started popping up and i cried so fucking hard. like for real this is the first time i ever cared abt a white man (3/?)_  
|  
_i wanted to say so many things to him bc he made such a difference to me when i was just starting college and coming out to people, but i totally choked. but he looked really happy. he was there with some guy, idk, maybe it’s his boyfriend or something (4/?)_  
|  
_and when i couldn’t get myself to say anything to him, he walked away and took a call, and i couldn’t hear what he was saying but it was really fucking cute, like he was smiling a lot, and the guy he was with was just standing there watching him and smiling (5/?)_  
|  
_like you don’t have to believe this story or whatever but it was just really nice to see him looking so happy. i always really relate to his stories about growing up gay in a tiny rural town so it was like...idk, maybe that’s my future. i hope it is. (6/6)_

Something wraps tight around Eddie’s ribs and clenches. He swallows thickly, and feels it flood his veins. God, he knows what this girl means. He’d do anything to see Richie that happy all the time. 

A minute later, Richie gets out of the shower. Eddie can hear him humming in the bathroom after the water stops, and he’s still humming when he walks out. His hair is damp, and he’s dressed in a bright yellow shirt that says _SUN’S OUT GUNS OUT,_ and he looks...so settled, so at home. He moves to the fridge again, drinks orange juice straight out of the carton. He beats a little rhythm against the side of the fridge door. He whistles through his teeth. 

He turns, looks out the big picture window at the front of the house. He smiles a little, walks to the door. Steps out onto the neatly trimmed front lawn. He stretches his arms up towards the sky, arching his back, like a sun salutation. He’s beaming, for absolutely no fucking reason other than that he’s alive. And Eddie is so, so fucking happy that he’s alive, and that Eddie gets to sit on this couch and look at him. 

A bright pink rubber ball bounces across the street, and Richie spots it immediately, goes to pick it up from the edge of the sidewalk. The little girl from the previous day—Lucy—is standing in her driveway. Richie waves at her, and calls over to her cheerfully, and Eddie can’t hear what he’s saying, but it makes the girl smile. She waves back, and Eddie can see Richie talking to her animatedly as he tosses the ball back across the street. The girl laughs, and Richie grins in response, says something that makes her laugh harder. Richie looks like he’s been given the fucking moon. 

It feels like a shot straight through the heart. Eddie is just...he’s constantly shocked that anyone is capable of loving someone this much, much less _him._ Every day, he feels like he’s discovering a new capacity in himself for how much he can feel. He just, he feels like he’s brimming with it, and it’s terrifying, and incredible, and he doesn’t know what to do with all of it. He doesn’t know what people _do_ with all of it. 

_I should just do it like him,_ he thinks, watching Richie chase after the girl’s ball again as it bounces into the street. _I should just love like he does. Full but self-sacrificial._ Isn’t that the best way? Just...loving someone without expecting anything in return? Isn’t that the opposite of every person who loved Eddie wrong? Richie loves and loves and loves and _never_ asks for anything, always holds back, always puts others first. Isn’t that what Eddie should emulate? 

But he remembers, still, the way he reacted when Patty said that to him. That Richie holds himself back. He remembers saying _he shouldn’t feel like that._ And he remembers thinking _he shouldn’t have to._ And he shouldn’t. Eddie hates that he feels like he has to hold himself back, deny himself anything. 

He doesn’t know how he should apply that to himself. He doesn’t know— Does that mean Eddie should do the same?

God. Eddie just. He loves him so much. And...Richie deserves that. Eddie’s mom fucked him up but Richie...Richie loves Isabel big and out loud and shouldn’t Eddie love Richie like that, too? Isn’t that what he deserves? 

Eddie breathes deep, and closes his eyes, and thinks: _I am capable of loving him. And he deserves my love._

Another inhale. The sound of Richie’s laughter ringing in his ears through the wall. Eddie thinks: _I deserve to love him._

The words get all stuck up in his throat, even though he never said any of it out loud. Eddie stands up, and a sense of urgency pushes him to the door. Richie is chatting with Lucy across the street, still. He’s standing there in the lawn with bare feet, arms stretched over his head, shirt riding up. His hair is damp and curling in the late afternoon sun. 

Eddie pulls open the door and says, breathless, urgent, “Richie.”

Richie turns, looks at him, still grinning. Head cocked to the side. His cheeks are rosy with the beginnings of a sunburn. “Huh?” 

Eddie can barely speak. _“Richie._ I.” 

Richie blinks, his smile sliding from his face in increments. “Is something wrong?”

Eddie shivers. The words rattle around his head. His tongue feels like lead. But he’s—he’s fucking _brave._ That’s what everyone keeps telling him. That’s what _Richie_ keeps telling him. And he’s been practicing so much. He never knew it was all for this moment. 

He opens his mouth and says, words tearing straight out of his chest, “I love you.”

Richie’s face goes through...a whole series of expressions, like he isn’t sure what his reaction is supposed to be so he’s just cycling through them all. His mouth spasms. His throat bobs. “What?”

Eddie feels like he’s about the pass the fuck out. “I just needed to tell you,” he says. “Suddenly. I think I’m going to regret this. I’m in love with you.” _God._ “Okay. Bye.” He steps back. Slams the door. 

Oh, god. Fuck. 

_Fuck._


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thursday, june 4, 2020 is belly's canonical date of birth so HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DAUGHTER MISS ISABEL "BELLY" TOZIER URIS, LIGHT OF MY LIFE <3 anyway so ofc i had to post today

Eddie’s knees feel like they’re about to buckle. He doesn’t know what the fuck he just did. He doesn’t know _why._ He just. It was all overflowing, and he thought, he should know, he should— God, _what._ What the fuck is wrong with him. 

The door is yanked back open, and Eddie falls back a step. Richie is looking at him, eyes huge, jaw slack. Eddie feels like he’s about to go up in flames. 

“Eddie,” Richie says. 

Eddie swallows thickly. “I—”

“No, Eddie, I mean.” Richie doesn’t stop staring at him. “What the _fuck?”_

Oh, jesus christ. What a fucking disaster. “I don’t know,” Eddie says helplessly, wishing Richie wasn’t standing in the fucking doorway so that he could just. Bolt. “I don’t know, just. You can just forget I said that.”

_“Eddie,”_ Richie says, and his eyes look a little wild. “I’m about to lose my mind. Are you— You can’t be serious. Right?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says, still scrambling to figure out if he can erase all of this, somehow. Why didn’t he fucking _think this through._ “We can pretend it never happened.”

“No, that’s not— I need to— Eddie, what do you fucking _mean?_ You can’t— Jesus christ.” Richie steps farther into the house, and the door swings shut. Eddie backs up another step. “Eddie,” Richie says again, like he’s trying to summon Eddie’s fucking sanity by saying his name enough times. “I need you to. Tell me what you fucking _mean.”_

“I don’t know what I mean,” Eddie says, which is a fucking _lie._ “I think I’m going to puke.”

“Don’t you fucking dare, you can’t just. _Say that to me._ Oh, fucking christ. If I’m totally blowing this out of proportion—” Richie drags both hands through his hair. 

“I’m sorry, I’m freaking the fuck out,” Eddie says weakly. 

_“Why?”_ Richie says. “God, I mean, Eddie— Can you just fucking tell me what you meant? Before I lose my fucking mind?”

“I don’t know.” Eddie swallows thickly, and he just. He feels so overwhelmed and scared and confused but he knows one thing, like it’s the only thing that’s ever been true. “I love you.”

Richie’s face goes white. Now it looks like _he’s_ going to be the one puking. His mouth works for several seconds before he says, hoarsely, “Like, as friends, or—?”

Eddie laughs out loud. He can’t help it. The thought of...all of this fucking drama, the way he’s sweating bullets right now, the terror cloggigng his throat. All because he wants to tell Richie he loves him _as a friend._ It’s hysterical. Eddie, himself, is feeling pretty hysterical. “Jesus christ, Richie,” he chokes out. _“No.”_

Richie shakes his head, bewildered. “Eddie, you have to realize—”

“I know,” Eddie says. “I know. This is...so fucking weird. I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I...I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m like, I’m fucking everything up, and everything I do is making it worse, I really don’t know why I’m fucking… _saying things—”_

“You _love me?”_ Richie says, and his voice is...smaller than Eddie would have imagined. Higher. “You— _me?_ Fucking...are you fucking kidding me?”

“It’d be pretty fucked up if I was,” Eddie says. 

“Not as fucked up as you fucking...confessing to me? Is that what’s happening right now? Eddie, I need you to tell me straight-up. Right now.”

Eddie laughs again. He can’t help it. He’s going to cry if he doesn’t. “Yeah. I guess. Yeah.”

Richie abruptly turns around to face the door. His shoulders are shaking. He presses his fists against the frosted glass window and rests his forehead against them. 

Eddie swallows thickly. “Um, okay,” he says. “I’m thinking maybe I should go, or—”

“Don’t you fucking move,” Richie says, without moving away from the door. “Give me a fucking _second,_ okay, I’m fucking _processing._ You— _me?”_

“Yeah,” Eddie croaks. “For a...for a while. It’s, you don’t have to worry about it. I swear, Richie, it’s just, it’s a thing, and you don’t have to...it doesn’t have to change anything.”

“Oh, fuck that,” Richie says to the window, and Eddie goes very cold and scared. And then Richie says, “Come on, Eddie, you can’t— I mean, I’ve been. I’ve been. Oh, holy shit. _Eddie.”_ He turns around again, finally, and his eyes are brimming with tears. He laughs wetly. “I’ve been in love with you my whole fucking life.”

Silence seems to ring in Eddie’s ears, as if a bomb went off without him knowing it. It kind of feels like one did. He feels dizzy. “What?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, looking similarly stunned. “I— Like, Eddie. Just. Head over fucking heels.”

Eddie feels himself, in a detached sort of way, lift a finger to point at his own chest. _“Me?”_

Richie laughs, and it sounds kind of hollow. “Yeah, you fucking...moron.”

Eddie’s knees are very weak. “You’re in love with me?”

“Yeah. Yes. Obviously.” Richie’s throat bobs. “I feel like. That makes way more sense than you being in love with _me.”_

Eddie shakes his head. He doesn’t know what it’s even in response to. “I need to sit down.”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees. _“God.”_

They stumble to the couch. Eddie doesn’t trust this couch. It convinced him to do something that was, in hindsight, completely fucking insane. He rubs his hand over his face and wonders if he might have a concussion. 

“What the fuck is happening?” Richie laughs breathlessly. “You— I mean— Since fucking _when?_ And also, are you _sure?”_

“Of course I’m fucking sure,” Eddie snaps, without knowing why. Defense mechanism, he supposes. He’s under...truly a literal fuckton of stress right now. “I don’t know how long. Maybe...three months. Is when I— Or maybe since Derry. Or maybe. I don’t know. It’s all very confusing and bad in my head.”

“Okay,” Richie says, on the other end of the couch. “Holy shit. Well. I think I need to lie down and think about this.”

“No, fuck off, you need to— You can’t expect me to tell you things and then just fucking not say things back,” Eddie says. 

“Eds, I didn’t even know you— I mean, just. I didn’t even know this could be _possible._ Like, I never even… This isn’t even something I ever _entertained._ Like not even in my wildest fantasies did I think—”

Eddie takes a deep breath. His heart is beating so fast he can’t be sure it’s not cardiac arrest. His head is pounding. “What, was I supposed to fucking…flirt with you for three to six months first?”

“I don’t fucking know! Eds, I literally just lost my shit telling Stan I would _never_ fucking tell you that I— That I’m in _love with you,_ like. Four fucking weeks ago.”

The reiteration—the repetition of the confession—still goes through Eddie like a livewire. If he’s having a heart attack, this is the fucking defibrillator. “Wait, _Stan_ knew?”

Richie barks out a laugh. He keeps going between staring straight at Eddie like he can’t look away, and looking just over his shoulder like eye contact might break him. “Apparently. Why, did he pry it out of you, too?”

“No,” Eddie says, “ _Patty_ did.”

Richie stares at him, agape, and then says, “If they fucking snitched to each other—”

But Eddie shakes his head. “No, I don’t think— I mean, Patty’s known about me for...for months, I mean, I think she knew before I did. But I don’t think she would have told Stan, she knows I. She knows how I am.”

“Yeah, well, apparently Stan’s known about _me_ since we were fucking _kids,”_ Richie says, like it’s a competition. 

Eddie feels like he’s just taking one direct hit to the skull after another. “You— Since we were _kids,_ Richie?”

Richie blinks. “I said my whole life, didn’t I?”

He did. But it didn’t really hit Eddie how long that was until now. “Holy shit,” he says helplessly. 

“Holy _shit,”_ Richie agrees. 

They both fall silent, staring at each other. Eddie doesn’t know what else to fucking say. He doesn’t even know how they’re supposed to move forward from here. He never thought he’d ever _get_ here. 

Richie swallows noisily. He says, “I kind of feel like I might be dreaming.”

“God,” Eddie says. “I sure fucking hope I’m not this big of a moron in your dreams.”

A smile wavers at the corner of Richie’s mouth. “Bigger,” he says.

Silence again. Eddie is still grappling with all of the thoughts spinning through his head. Everything just feels like...so much. What the fuck is _happening?_

He lets out a short, tight breath, and says, “I don’t know what to do now.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “I mean. Part of me wants to, like. Shake you and make you tell me you love me a million more times. But I’m a little scared that if I move I’ll wake myself up.”

Eddie laughs roughly. He looks at Richie. He looks...terrified, honestly. But his eyes are so bright. Hopeful. Maybe a little desperate. “I love you,” he says, before he can convince himself not to. 

Immediately, Richie’s eyes are flooding with tears, and he’s dipping his head as they drip into his lap. “Oh, holy fuck,” he says, scrubbing his hands over his face. “God, Eddie, holy _fuck._ You have no idea how long I...”

“Since we were kids?” Eddie says, and tries out a shaky smile. 

Richie makes a sound between a sob and a laugh. “God, _yeah._ Shit. Christ, this is...surreal.”

Eddie furiously blinks back tears of his own. “Say it back, you dick.”

Richie’s head jerks up, and he looks shocked, like he can’t believe Eddie wants that. Like he can’t believe anyone wants him to love them. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, fuck, I. I love you. Eddie. I love you so fucking much. How could I not?”

It goes through Eddie like electricity. He smiles. “Thank fuck, honestly. I thought. Like. For a minute there I thought this was going to go a lot worse. Like...a _lot.”_

Richie chews on his lip and looks at him, still wiping tears off his cheeks. “Yeah? I mean. I was literally never going to tell _you.”_

“Fucker,” Eddie says, without any heat. “Make me do all the fucking work.”

“I literally can’t believe this,” Richie says. “Holy shit.”

Eddie is still shaking. He can’t stop. “Is there a trashcan nearby?” he says. “I still feel like I might barf.”

Richie barks out a laugh. “Eddie,” he says. “I love you so much.”

“I’m serious!” Eddie insists. He’s sweating so much. “I might be having a panic attack, it’s hard to tell.”

There’s a moment of hesitation, and Richie’s throat bobs. And then he says, “C’mere.”

Eddie’s heart skips a beat. “Huh?”

“Come here.” He holds out a hand. “Just. Come closer.”

Eddie feels like he might pass out if he does. But he’s already taking Richie’s hand as he thinks it, and Richie is pulling him closer, making him scoot across the middle cushion of the couch. His knees knock against Richie’s. He keeps pulling. 

The second Richie wraps his arms around him, Eddie feels all the air go out of him, like a deflating balloon. He sags, and slumps into him, head falling to Richie’s shoulder. Richie slides a tentative hand up his back—Eddie can feel _him_ shaking, too—and then it curls into his hair, holding him there. They both exhale. 

“Holy shit,” Richie whispers. 

Eddie laughs, feeling lightheaded. “Yeah.”

There’s a few beats of silence, and they both just breathe. Eddie’s twisted at a weird angle, arm wedged between his body and Richie’s, neck bent to rest against his shoulder. But it feels so good. It feels...natural. They haven’t done much of this, _none_ of this really, nothing lingering like this. But it feels right. Eddie just sits there, and lets Richie hold him, and thinks, _holy shit, he loves me, he said he loves me. I told him I love him and he says he loves me too._

Richie inhales softly and says, “I mean, just. _Why?”_

Eddie blinks, but doesn’t pick up his head. _“Why?”_

“Yeah. Like...why.”

“Why am I in love with you?”

“...Yeah.”

Eddie huffs a laugh, but it’s not funny. He shakes his head. Shivers at Richie’s touch against his back. “Because you’re fucking… _good._ You’re good and you’re. Brave and you’re funny and. Because I just fucking do, okay? Is there supposed to be a reason? I just fucking love you.”

Richie’s chin presses into the top of his head. He sniffles a little. “I’d just like to know, so I can keep doing it.”

“Honestly? Apparently all you had to do was hold a baby one time and I was fucking wrecked.”

Eddie can feel the jump of Richie’s chest as he laughs. “What, seriously?”

Eddie shrugs, eyes closed. Richie’s thumb sweeps across his lower back, and it makes his stomach drop through his feet. “Yeah, I don’t know. I literally just fucking lost it.”

“Aw, Eds. That’s...really fucking cute, actually. I had no idea.”

Eddie breathes in deep. He squeezes his arm out from where it’s trapped between them and curls it tentatively around Richie’s waist. God, it feels good. “You loved her so much,” he says softly. “And I just thought...I wanted that. I wanted… I don’t know. You loved her like forever. And I wanted a piece of that forever, too.”

He feels as much as he hears Richie’s breath hitch, and for a second Eddie thinks _fuck, too much, too revealing, I fucked up._ But then the hand resting at the back of his head is sliding away, down Eddie’s jaw. And Richie’s urging his face up, until Eddie has to open his eyes and sees Richie looking down at him, eyes bright and searching. He looks at Eddie, mere inches away, and suddenly Eddie can’t breathe. His mind goes white. 

“Eds,” Richie says softly. “Can I kiss you? I just. I’d really fucking love to kiss you.”

Eddie’s heart feels like it’s going to beat right out of his throat. He nods.

***

Richie has thought about what it would be like to kiss Eddie Kaspbrak a hundred, a thousand, a million times. It’s something he’s tried not to fixate on too deeply in his adult life, but couldn’t quite seem to avoid regardless, especially in his sleep and those half-conscious hours. He’s imagined the feel of it, the soft gust of Eddie’s breath against his face, the sounds he might make. All the ways Richie might like to do it.

He never thought about it as something that might one day actually happen. 

That first touch of their lips nearly knocks him off his feet, and he’s not even standing. It’s just, it’s so much, it’s so...unbelievable. It rocks Richie to his core, that he gets to do this, even once. That he gets to tip Eddie’s face up towards his and lean in and press their mouths together, that Eddie is letting him do that, that Eddie maybe even _wants_ him to. It’s earth-shattering. Richie feels like he wants to cry again, but he can’t, because he has to do _this,_ he _gets_ to do this. 

Eddie huffs a soft breath against his mouth as Richie kisses him, as gentle as he knows how to be. The sensation sweeps through Richie, makes him shiver. He presses his palm into the small of Eddie’s back, like that might keep him grounded, and curves his other hand around Eddie’s stubbled jaw, holds him steady, kisses him again, chaste and closed-mouthed. And it’s fucking magical, it’s like nothing he ever could have imagined. Someone makes a soft, whining sound, and he thinks it might have been him. He’s never been so overwhelmed in his life. 

He really still can’t believe this is happening. Nothing could have prepared him for the turn this day was going to take. When Eddie had opened the door and called out to him, Richie had expected the worst. A call from Stan, or a natural disaster. Eddie telling him he loves him...that has never crossed Richie’s mind. Not as an actual possibility. 

Everything after that has felt like a blur, like Richie’s memories on the edge of being blackout drunk. A complete overload of information and emotion, all while he desperately tried to process everything Eddie was saying, everything it meant. He barely remembers anything that came out of his own mouth. He will never forget anything that came out of Eddie’s. 

But nothing is coming out of their mouths now except a soft sigh from Eddie that sends Richie spiralling. He gasps a little, crushes his mouth harder against Eddie’s, presses in closer. Eddie’s hand is curled into the back of Richie’s shirt, and Richie can feel his heart beating in his tongue. He can’t get enough of the warm, weather-chapped texture of Eddie’s lips against his, addicting and willing. There is nothing he doesn’t want right now. He feels like he might die if he gets any of it. 

He expects this to be it. When Richie asked Eddie if he could kiss him, he expected this—a couple of slow, gentle kisses, nothing crazy, nothing intense. He lets them linger, because he wants to savour them. The sweet curve of Eddie’s mouth and the shivering tenderness of these first uncertain touches. With everything so new and big and terrifying, Richie doesn’t think either of them can handle anything more than that. He thinks he’ll pull away in a second, two seconds, the moment he’s sated this incredible urge, and then they’ll look at each other, and smile, and just breathe through it. 

Instead, Richie kisses him again, maybe a little greedy, a little desperate not to let it end just yet, and then Eddie tips his head to the side and nudges his face up into another kiss, and opens his mouth just enough to catch Richie’s lower lip between his own, just the barest hint of his teeth pressing into it, and Richie fucking _melts._ He makes another helpless noise, and drops his mouth open to lick at Eddie’s upper lip instinctively, and that makes _Eddie_ make a tiny sound like a mewl, and Richie thinks he’s going to lose his mind. 

“Shit,” he breathes, and wants to pull back to ask Eddie if this is okay, if he needs a breather, but he can’t seem to rip his mouth away long enough to even draw a full breath. 

Eddie just hums in response, breath humid against Richie’s mouth, and his free hand goes up to curl around the back of Richie’s neck like it had been that morning when he woke up, twisting into the hair at his nape. Richie feels like his soul is going to leave his body, and he loves it, he loves it so much. His nose presses into Eddie’s cheek, rough and unshaven, and god, it’s been _so long_ since Richie kissed anyone, and he’s never kissed anyone like _this._ He’s never kissed anyone like he’s been thinking about it for his entire life, because he has. 

Richie licks at the corner of Eddie’s mouth impulsively, wanting him to make that noise again, but instead Eddie drops his jaw and kisses him open-mouthed, and their tongues brush, a slick warm slide, and Richie’s the one whining high in his throat, breathless with it. 

“God,” Eddie says against his mouth, before Richie licks behind his teeth and makes him shudder full-body. _“Richie.”_

Richie wants him to say his name a thousand more times. He presses his fingertips harder into his jaw, accidentally yanks the back of his shirt out of the waist of his shorts in his effort to pull Eddie closer. Eddie breathes a muffled sound into his mouth, back arching, and then bites Richie’s mouth the second Richie’s fingertips brush bare skin. For a second Richie flounders, incredibly into this but unsure if that was a good sign or a bad sign, until Eddie lets go of his shirt to reach back and manually press his hand flat against him. So, good then. 

Richie shoves his hand up Eddie’s shirt and goes dizzy. 

“Eddie,” he manages to say in between slick presses of their mouths, and then his eyes go hot because this is _Eddie,_ this is the man he’s been in love with since before he knew what loving someone meant, this is a dream he never imagined could come true. “Eddie,” he says again, and kisses him. “Is this alright?”

“God, yeah,” Eddie says, half breath half laughter, and then he’s lifting up and holding tight to Richie’s shoulder and the back of his neck and _climbing into his lap,_ knees on either side of Richie’s thighs on the couch, and Richie think he might just fucking die from it all. 

But he can’t die, because Eddie Kaspbrak is sitting in his lap and kissing him, his mouth hot and eager, and Richie has to commit every single second of it to memory. He presses his fingertips into the dimples in his cheek, and smooths his palm up the long, lean line of his back, and sits there as he’s kissed within a fucking inch of his life. And quite honestly it doesn’t take a lot. Eddie isn’t...it’s not like he’s a master kisser, or that he’s shoving his tongue down Richie’s throat. His kisses are a little clumsy, long and deep but definitely no lesbian ever sat _him_ down and showed him how to do it, but it blows Richie’s fucking mind anyway, completely guts him. Being kissed after 30 years of repressed longing will do that, apparently. Richie regrets absolutely nothing. 

With Eddie in his lap like this, his mouth is a couple inches above Richie’s, and Richie is more than happy to tip his head up to meet him, to take whatever Eddie is willing to give him. They’re pressed tight together, stomach-to-stomach, and Richie can feel the warm, heavy weight of him all along his body, and he can feel the heat between his legs, but his mind is so far from that it’s insane. There’s definitely something carnal to this, something bone-deep and hungry, but all he wants is to pull Eddie in tighter, kiss him deeper, slide their tongues together and taste him, rub his lips raw against the rasp of his stubble. 

A second after he thinks it, Eddie pulls his mouth away from Richie’s mouth and scrapes his teeth against the edge of his jaw, and then farther back to mouth at the soft spot under his ear, and Richie can’t help the pathetic noise he makes, dropping his hand from Eddie’s cheek to his thigh and gripping hard. Eddie breathes damply against his throat, and Richie edges his fingertips up under the hem of his shorts and says, “I’m going to lose my mind, Eds, holy shit.”

“I know,” Eddie says breathlessly. “I’m going a little insane.”

“Trust me when I say I never thought you’d want to do this to me,” Richie says, scratching his blunt nails against the soft skin of his thigh. 

“Honestly, I didn’t know either.” Eddie sucks softly at a patch of skin on his throat, and Richie nearly jumps out of his skin. “Fuck, I don’t know. I just want to.”

_“Please,”_ Richie says, because it’s the only word he can form.

“I only started thinking about kissing you at all like two weeks ago,” Eddie admits, and then licks over his adam’s apple. 

“Shit,” Richie gasps. “I’m so fucking in love with you.”

“I’m in love with _you,”_ Eddie says, like Richie might have forgotten. 

It makes him want to cry all over again. 

“Tell me what you want,” he says urgently, palming Eddie’s thigh and the small of his back. “Please, anything. I want to—”

“I don’t know, I’m figuring it out as I go,” Eddie says, returning to his mouth to layer lingering kisses there. “If I think about it too much I’ll fucking die.”

Richie can understand that. “Okay. Yeah. I— Shirts on? Shirts off?”

Eddie laughs, like it’s a joke. “I think I’ll pass out,” he says, and kisses Richie again, like he can’t get close enough, a little hard and frantic. 

“Yeah, okay.” Richie tries clumsily to reciprocate, to match his enthusiasm, and also say, “Yeah, let’s just make out. Forever.”

“Mhmm,” Eddie agrees, and then drags his hand down Richie’s chest and stomach in a way that sets his entire fucking body on fire, and tugs up the hem to bare the very unsexy paunch of Richie’s stomach. Eddie doesn’t seem to notice the very uncute way in which it rolls over the waist of his shorts, though, because he’s busy pulling up the front of _his_ shirt and pressing their stomachs together while they make out and Richie thinks maybe that’s kind of weird but can’t think about that because it turns out he’s _really_ fucking into it, the soft press of bare skin, the intimacy of it. He makes a strangled sound and hauls Eddie closer with his hands on his back and thigh and they kiss sloppy and open-mouthed. 

Eddie slips his tongue into Richie’s mouth and RIchie sucks on the tip of it, loves the way Eddie jolts with it and then pushes his tongue deeper into his mouth like he wants more. Richie gives him everything he’s got, slides their tongues together and pushes his hand up Eddie’s thigh to touch just the edge of his ass, and his hips twitch as he groans, and it’s _everything._ Richie feels like he could do anything.

“God,” Eddie sighs, pulling back and then immediately pressing another lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth. _“God.”_

“Yeah,” Richie agrees. 

Eddie makes an unhappy sound. “No. My mouth fucking hurts.”

Richie laughs, eyes fluttering open. He can’t seem to get them to stay open, no matter how badly he wants to take in every second of this. Eddie’s brows are pinched, and his mouth is raw and shiny and red and Richie is obsessed with it. “Yeah,” he says, because he feels like he’s been rubbing his lips over sandpaper. “Get used to it.”

“Christ,” Eddie says, licking his lips in a way that makes Richie want to do it for him. His eyes are still closed, which means Richie gets to look his fill, and he doesn’t think it’ll ever be enough. _“Ow._ Can you fucking shave?”

“Speak for yourself,” Richie says, and mouths over the edge of his jaw a little, even though it’s really pretty painful at this point. It’s worth it for the way Eddie shivers in his lap. 

“Bitch,” Eddie mutters, and it’s so funny that Richie can’t help but laugh, and then he laughs until he’s crying, and it’s mostly just a release of emotion at that point, but Eddie looks kind of concerned, a smile playing at the corner of his red, raw mouth. 

“Oh my god,” Richie sighs once he’s come down from it, sweaty and exhausted. “Wow. What a fucking _day.”_

“Yeah,” Eddie says, shifting in his lap like he’s not sure he’s allowed to be there now that they’re not actively making out. Richie holds onto his hip to keep him there. “I’ve been like. Losing it since I woke up.”

Richie tips his head to the side, and tries to soak in the warmth of Eddie against him, just in case it’s taken away suddenly. “Because of me?”

Eddie gives him an odd look. “No, because of the weather. _Obviously_ because of you, Richie.”

Richie shrugs as exaggeratedly as he can without taking either of his hands off of Eddie. “Well excuse me if I’m shocked, Mr. Kaspbrak, people haven’t exactly been lining up around the block to pine after me!”

“What about fucking _Mark?”_ Eddie says, and then immediately goes white and says, “No, forget I said that, that came out weird, I’m not. Just forget about that.”

Richie wants to laugh until he cries again. He means to just leave it, because Eddie looks so embarrassed he might die, but he can’t help but say, _“Mark?”_

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says tightly. “I’ve been under a lot of stress.”

“I’ve said like twelve words to him!”

“Shut up!”

Richie grins, and leans in to kiss him, and then says, right against his mouth, “Do you think he’s into dudes?”

“I’m going to strangle you,” Eddie says. “Relationship over.”

Richie’s eyes flash hot for a second. “Holy shit. Are we going to, like. _Date?”_

Eddie goes stiff, and Richie immediately wants to snatch the words back, stuff them down his own throat, but Eddie just says, “Oh, god, I don’t _know._ Do you think I fucking thought this far ahead?”

“I sure didn’t,” Richie laughs. “It’s okay, we’ll just, like. Figure it out as we go, yeah?”

Eddie relaxes, and Richie likes that. “Yeah. I guess so.” He tips his head to the side. “What a...wild fucking day, huh?”

Richie grins so wide it hurts his face. “The fucking wildest.”

“Yeah.” Eddie leans forward again, kisses him again like he can’t help it. “I’m scared shitless,” he admits in a murmur, close against Richie’s mouth. “But I’m happy. I want you to...know that.”

“Me too,” Richie confesses. “Like. Scared out of my mind. I want to remind you that I’m...like, you’ve met me, right? You are aware of who I am as a person?”

“Fully,” Eddie says solemnly. “Like, painfully aware.”

Richie laughs a little. “Okay. Just checking.”

“You cannot possibly think you’re more of an unbearable disaster than I am,” Eddie says. 

Richie frowns and shrugs. “I mean—”

“No. Shut up. I’m so messed up on so many levels.” Eddie sighs gustily against his chin. “But I’m working on it, right? I’m not, like… I’m better than I was last year, and the year before that. Right?”

“I loved you then, too,” Richie says earnestly, looking up into his wide eyes. “Always.”

Eddie bites his lip, smiles gently. “Moron.”

Richie’s heart squeezes. “Yeah.”

Eddie sighs, lets his head tip forward so that his forehead bumps against Richie’s. It’s indescribably wonderful. “I don’t know, like. How to move forward from here. This really was not...an anticipated outcome. And you know I like anticipating outcomes.”

Richie laughs softly, holds onto his hip. “Yeah. I know.”

“Please be like...a little patient while I figure my shit out,” Eddie says. “I promise I will.”

Richie closes his eyes and cants his face forwards so that their lips brush together. It sends a fresh thrill through him. “I can be _very_ patient,” he breathes. “I’ve waited 30 years for this.”

He’d wait 30 more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOOOOO YALL!!! what a TIME. i truly hope it didn't disappoint.
> 
> also i beg of you, PLEASE look at [this art](https://twitter.com/darkrednights/status/1267201572859269120) i commissioned of richie and belly, i have been weeping nonstop since i saw it. 
> 
> see yall in the last chapter <3 i can't believe it's ending!!


	12. Chapter 12

There’s something unfair to the point of absurdity about wondering if you’ve ruined something even after you’ve somehow ended up with the best possible outcome. 

It’s about the fear of change, Eddie thinks, lying still in their shared bed in the early morning light of their third morning in Arizona. He was obviously overjoyed by Richie’s reaction to his ill-timed confession yesterday. He was happy that Richie didn’t hate him for feeling that way, and that they wouldn’t have to stop being friends, and he was _happy_ that Richie returned his feelings. He really was, even if thinking about it too hard is kind of terrifying. Patty was right when she said he has some issues with people wanting him, and he’s been working on it, he’s been talking about it with his therapist and working through some of that trauma, but it’s not like that fear’s just gone. 

But it’s not even just that. As if those things aren’t enough for one man. 

It’s that he’s scared of the way things can’t stay the same. One of Eddie’s favourite things about Richie is the constancy of him, the way he makes Eddie feel safe and settled. He likes...the way they’re so comfortable together, the easy way things flow between them. 

That’s what Eddie’s scared of ruining, although that started the second he began realizing his own feelings. Yesterday was wonderful, incredible, but the evening was _torture._ Their dinner was stilted, conversation was awkward. Neither of them knew what to say or do. And Eddie knows that’s inevitable, that their relationship is changing drastically and it’s going to take them a while to figure out this new dynamic, but he hates that. He hates that things have to change. He hates that he’s scared of not liking the new dynamic as much as he loved the old one. He hates that this is his fault for ever saying anything, even though he knew he couldn’t just go on like he was forever. 

He thinks about all of this, awake at 6am on a Sunday morning on a vacation that was meant to be relaxing. 

Richie is asleep next to him, breathing softly on the other side of the bed. Eddie stops staring at the ceiling to roll over to look at him.

He’s not a graceful sleeper. His mouth is open and his hair is everywhere and he’s drooling and his face is smushed into his pillow. He’s not wildly attractive in sleep. He’s not wildly attractive when he’s awake, either. Like, when Eddie looks at him, he doesn’t think, _that’s a man everyone would want to have sex with._ But then again, Eddie’s not even capable of thinking, _that’s a man_ I _want to have sex with._ What a fucking scary thought. Is that bad? 

He breathes deep, wills the panic away. Focuses on looking at Richie here, now. He’s not wildly attractive, but looking at him _does_ make warmth bloom in Eddie’s chest, clog up his throat. Eddie loves the sharp cut of his jaw, the uneven tilt of his mouth, his chipped teeth. He loves the soft, wild curls of hair spilling across his forehead, and the arch of his eyebrows, usually hidden behind his glasses. The breadth of his shoulders makes Eddie a little dizzy if he looks at them too long, as does the size of his hands, and the bump of his adam’s apple. The sense memory of sitting in Richie’s lap, thighs spread around his thick waist, stomachs touching, sends heat through Eddie like nothing else. He has a lot of thoughts and feelings about his clothed crotch pressed against Richie’s soft middle, which he can’t think about too much without freaking out but which also makes him unbelievably, viscerally hungry. 

Eddie inhales, brushes the thoughts away before he starts spiralling into embarrassment. Traces the line of Richie’s nose with his eyes, the curve of his lips, which still look a little red and raw from yesterday. Eddie can feel the tingly itch of beard burn around his own mouth, and he licks his lips impulsively. He thinks about the fact that this might be his life now. Dealing with bearn burn. From kissing Richie. 

Richie’s hand is on the sheets between them, palm up, fingers curled gently. Heart in his throat, Eddie reaches across the space between them, drags one fingertip across his palm. Patty does that for him sometimes—holds Eddie’s hand gently in her own and strokes her fingertips across his palm in a way that tickles but feels nice, too, feels sweet and affectionate. He’s seen Richie do the same for Isabel, stroking her tiny palm over and over. Eddie thinks it’s a nice way to love someone out loud, without having to open his mouth and ruin it with his clumsy, inept words. 

He focuses so hard on doing that, on tracing the lines of Richie’s palm and on not thinking any thoughts that might throw him into an anxiety attack at six in the morning, that he doesn’t notice right away that Richie’s awake. It’s only when he hears Richie swallowing thickly that he flicks his eyes up from his hand to his face and sees Richie watching him intently, eyes bright through half-closed eyelids and shockingly long lashes. 

“Good morning,” Richie says softly, voice low and hoarse. 

Eddie bites his tongue and says, “Morning.”

Richie’s lips quirk up in a small, crooked smile. Eddie wants to keep that smile forever. “This is nice,” Richie murmurs, closing his fingers gently around Eddie’s. “Helps avoid that oh-shit-was-it-all-a-dream feeling.”

Eddie huffs a laugh through his nose, presses his face into his pillow as his cheeks heat up. “Maybe _this_ is a dream,” he says, because for some reason his first instinct is always to be contrary. 

“Nah,” Richie says. “If it was a dream you’d already be kissing me.”

Eddie feels himself flush, and closes his eyes against it, like that’ll make it less true. He tries to breathe slowly and wonders if this means he’s supposed to, to kiss him now. If that’s what Richie is expecting. And Eddie knows it’s not a big deal, that they kissed a _lot_ yesterday so it shouldn’t be such a fucking ordeal, doing it here, now, but it is. Something about the space between them feels uncrossable, something about the act of moving towards him feels impossible. He feels like he doesn’t know how to move, how to do it _right,_ without fucking up somehow. He feels like he isn’t sure if that’s actually what Richie wants. The idea of making a move and Richie jerking back in surprise because that’s not what he wanted is crippling. 

God. This is his problem. He always feels like he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do next. He misses things being _natural._

Richie’s fingers tighten around his own. “Hey,” he says, quiet, hesitant. “Sorry. I didn’t mean— You don’t have to. Do that.”

Eddie grits his teeth, because even his indecision is actively fucking things up. “Sorry,” he says. “I want to. I— You might have to, like. Take the reins with the, uh, initiating things. For a bit. Until I can figure out how to be less shit at it.”

“Eds, I’m not going to, like— If you don’t want to—”

“No, I _do,”_ Eddie says, because god, he _does._ Kissing is...shockingly easy, once he’s started. Easier than he ever imagined. It’s the getting there that seems insurmountably hard. “I do. I promise. I just don’t know how to...start.”

Richie is quiet for a moment, still holding Eddie’s hand, thumb rubbing over his knuckle. Eddie doesn’t open his eyes. “It’s very simple,” Richie says softly, and Eddie hears him shifting, his voice getting closer, more breathy. “You just...lean...in.” By the end, Eddie can feel his breath against his mouth. He inhales shakily, shivers with anticipation, can practically feel Richie’s lips against his. But they don’t quite meet. 

Eddie opens his eyes. Richie is close, so close. He’s watching Eddie, waiting. Eddie’s mouth goes dry. Richie’s eyes flick down to his lips, and Eddie wants him with an intensity that nearly overwhelms him.

He closes the space between them before he has the time to overthink it, pressing their lips together. And then everything is easy again. 

The breathy sound Richie makes against his mouth sends a thrill through Eddie, compels him to press in closer, desperate to just...feel more. He’s intensely aware of how disgusting his mouth tastes, so he keeps it mostly closed, breathes hard through his nose as the edge of Richie’s teeth scrape over his lip, and then the tip of his tongue soothes over it. Eddie is so unfamiliar with this feeling, the way kissing Richie awakens something deep and insatiable inside him. He didn’t know it could _be_ like this, never knew he had this hunger inside him. It’s a little scary, this new feeling, but it’s also incredible, the way it gets his heart beating fast, the way it makes his body do things he never would have thought to do. 

Like: he’s lifting his hand to Richie’s jaw now, holding it steady but also rubbing his thumb over his stubble, into his cheek. He’s tipping his own head to the side, licking over the corner of Richie’s mouth, reaching out to drag his free hand down the center of his ribs. He’s pushing one leg between Richie’s, not for the purpose of any sort of stimulation, just to _feel it,_ the warmth and weight of his thighs. Things he never knew he wanted, never consciously thought about, but now does on instinct. Richie’s chest rumbles as he makes a low, pleased sound, and Eddie wants to sink into it. He wants to put his mouth there, feel it against his lips. 

Richie doesn’t let him get far enough to try it, rolling over him suddenly, straddling his waist. One hand at his shoulder presses him into the mattress, and Eddie makes a surprised sound, body going tense and hot, and Richie kisses his mouth hard and then backs up, says, “This okay?”

Eddie nods quickly, remembering the brand of Richie’s hand on his back under his shirt, remembering the warm, heavy press of his body. 

It’s even better like this, with Richie on top of him, bearing down against him. He’s not being aggressive about it, or even going anywhere with it. He’s just...covering Eddie’s body with his own, and kissing him just like he was before, but pressed all along his body now, heavy and anchoring. Eddie would have thought it might be overwhelming, to feel so much of him at once, to be caged in like this, on the bed with so few clothes between them, but it’s not. Richie is kissing him soft and lingering and slow, and Eddie breathes in deep through his nose and feels...safe.

And then Richie tears his mouth away from Eddie’s and slides down a few inches, layers kisses over his jaw and down his throat, and Eddie makes a sound he is _not_ proud of, desperate and whiny. Richie chuckles softly, and licks over his adam’s apple, and then bites gently on the edge of his collarbone through the fabric of his t-shirt, and Eddie keens softly. He didn’t even know these were things that were supposed to feel good. He feels like everything Richie does to him is eye-opening. He wonders if Richie actually knows what he’s doing, or if he, like Eddie, is just being tugged along by strange, instinctive desires. 

Richie licks at the divot between Eddie’s collarbones, and then picks up his head and says, _“This_ is more like the dreams I have.”

Eddie laughs breathlessly, still in awe of that thought, both hands curled in the front of Richie’s shirt. “Uh-huh.”

“You too?” Richie asks. “Dreams like this?”

Eddie closes his eyes and arches into him, wanting more but not knowing, yet, how to ask for it. “Sometimes,” he admits. “More recently.”

“Fuck,” Richie breathes, and when Eddie cracks one eye open he’s grinning. “What a fucking miracle.”

Eddie huffs a laugh, squirms under him just to feel him where they’re pressed together. “You’re crushing me,” he lies. 

“Mhmm.” Richie kisses his throat again. “Not gonna lie, Eds, I kinda feel like I wished this all into existence.”

“Then you wished me wishing, too,” Eddie says. “I hope you didn’t also wish all the panic attacks, because if so, fuck you.”

Richie hums, and his eyes go sad. “I’m sorry.”

“What? Fuck no, you don’t have to apologize for my brain being...fucking stupid. And my various traumas and shit.”

Richie makes a vague noise, kisses his chin. “I’m sorry you have such a shit past with this kind of stuff.” He hesitates, and then says, “I’m going to try to be better than that. If you...let me.”

Eddie’s chest aches. He presses his palms against Richie’s sides. “You’re already a hundred times better,” he says softly. “You couldn’t be like them if you tried.”

Richie smiles down at him, eyes bright, and then leans in to kiss him hard one last time before saying, “So, breakfast? Grand Canyon again? It’s our last day of paradise.”

Eddie grins, and he loves how easy it feels. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

From there, the rest of their final day of vacation is...good, though clumsy and awkward. It almost feels ridiculous, to be out doing vacation things when something so big is happening behind the scenes, and all Eddie can think about is Richie, and how Richie loves him, and Eddie loves _Richie,_ and how they kissed, and they could be kissing again. They see the Grand Canyon again, do some hiking around the trails, and it feels much smaller in comparison to this enormous change taking place in Eddie’s life. He wants to cup his hands around his mouth and yell, _You think this is big? I just got together with my best friend!_

He thinks it’s funny until he thinks a little too hard about the reality of that, the fact that they’re _together_ now, or something. And, even more than that, that no one else knows yet. 

“Hey,” he says, as Richie drives them the two hours back in late afternoon. “So, um. Have you...told anyone? About this?” He gestures between them awkwardly. 

Richie glances at him, and then back to the road. “Uh...no, not yet. Why, did you—did you not want to tell people?”

Eddie makes a short sound like a laugh at the idea of it. “As if our friends wouldn’t find out _immediately.”_

Richie smiles crookedly, staring straight ahead. “Yeah, I guess. But like, if you’d rather keep it, like, lowkey or something—”

“No, Rich, that’s not what I mean,” Eddie says quickly, waving his hand in front of his face. “I just mean, like. I’m dreading it. The telling part.” He hesitates. “I don’t want to have to, like. _Tell them._ Like I wish they could just _know._ And I know they’re all going to make a huge deal of it and I hate thinking about that. I’m already trying not to freak out myself.”

Richie laughs softly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m not looking forward to the big reveal, either.”

Eddie chews on his lip. “Do you think it’d be, like, a dick move to tell them over text? Would that be really shitty?”

Richie hums thoughtfully, hand patting a beat on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. What, you just want to drop the news in the group chat?”

“Ugh, no. That sounds terrible.” Eddie taps the back of his phone, lying on his knee. “But maybe we could just tell everyone individually? Like, I’ll take half of them, you take the other half?”

He expects Richie to laugh, but he doesn’t. He just nods slowly, considering, and then says, “Honestly, that might be our best bet. Which friends do you want?”

“Patty,” Eddie says immediately. “Since she, like. Already knows. About me. Also, Bev. And Audra, too, I guess. They actually all know, I kind of had a confessional moment at Ladies’ Night a few weeks ago.”

Richie laughs out loud. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll take Stan, then. And Bill and Ben? You take the wives, I’ll take the husbands.”

“Who’s got Mike, then?”

“You can have him,” Richie says. “I’ll take Belly.”

Eddie snorts. “You gonna text her, Rich? You gonna text Isabel on her little baby phone?”

“I’ll ask Stan to show her,” Richie says, grinning. “It’ll just say WE DID IT, BELLY. WE FUCKIN’ DID IT.” 

“So much for your no-swearing rule,” Eddie says with a laugh. 

“The situation calls for it,” Richie says. 

Eddie is still smiling as he pulls up his texts and starts drafting one for the ladies. He can’t send it yet—not until Richie’s able to send one to their significant others at the same time—but he figures he might need the time to get the wording just right. 

In the end, it’s very simple. _Hey. Please don’t make a big deal out of this, but Richie and I got together yesterday. Yes, I am losing my mind. No, I do not want to talk about it. Yes, I’m very happy and also terrified. Love you. Thanks for your help._

Predictably, when he does send the texts, he immediately gets responses from all three ladies that he interprets mostly as muted screams. Patty says, _If you think you can get away with not talking about it to me you don’t know me at all!! But I will give you a few days to gather yourself. I AM SCREAMING._ Mike’s reply to his slightly altered text just says, _Oh my god. Wow. Okay. Thanks for telling me!_

All of them say, _Love you so much._

Richie looks up from his own phone, and grins, and says, “Stan’s really happy for us.”

Eddie can’t help but smile at that. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

He feels a lot better by the time they go to bed that night, all packed up and ready to fly home the following morning. He feels...settled. Richie kisses him outside the bathroom when Eddie comes out from brushing his teeth. He still looks a little shocked when Eddie kisses him back. But it’s good. He feels good. 

He feels less good three hours later, still wide awake and staring up at the ceiling again in the dark, maybe spiralling just a little. 

He’s not even sure what his problem is, or like...where it started. He doesn’t know what’s causing the knot of anxiety in his chest right now. He got into bed feeling fucking _happy,_ and satisfied, and content. But he couldn’t fall asleep right away, and now he’s thinking about the texts from earlier again, and facing his friends when they get home tomorrow, and the way things will be different. The way they might look at him different. 

And he doesn’t know why that bothers him so much. He lies there in bed for hours, picking apart the tangle of dark, scary thoughts in his head, the way he did months ago now when his therapist told him to practice thinking about his negative feelings to figure out what was upsetting him. He whittles away at them slowly, bit by bit. He thinks about his friends knowing that he’s in love with Richie, and that feels...fine. He’s not ashamed of that. He thinks about his friends knowing _him,_ all of him, and that’s scary, but it’s not...it’s not the thing that’s making him feel sick and shaky. That’s not the root of it. 

It’s something else, it’s. When he thinks about it, there’s something else that’s been at the core of all of this maybe for a long time. Maybe...maybe for his entire life. Something he never wanted to look at, and never wanted other people to see in him. Something that made him...scared, and being scared made him angry, and defensive, and loud. But he’s slowed down a lot, these past few years. He’s shrugged off a lot of the things he realized weren’t _him._ He’s gotten quieter. Gentler. He’s become a lot more of the things he was always scared of being, in the past. 

He spent a long time being scared of anyone looking at him and seeing his feelings. But he’s not scared of that anymore. He’s not scared of...loving Richie out in the open. 

There’s something else, something Eddie’s been avoiding seeing in _himself_ for his entire life. He doesn’t know how long it’s been there, but after hours of picking away at the thought, uncovering it bit by bit—and maybe he’s been uncovering it for months now, or years—he sees it for what it is. What it’s always been. Not the root of all of his problems, exactly, but...something important. 

“Richie,” he says, turning over, shaking his shoulder. _“Richie._ Wake up.”

Richie startled awake, squints at him in the gloom of their room. “Huh?”

“I need to tell you something,” Eddie says, heart pounding. He didn’t think this through. But the words are already pushing at his throat. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, blinking hard, looking nervous. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Eddie says. His heartbeat is loud in his ears. “I’m gay.”

Richie blinks at him. “Uh-huh?”

“I’m gay,” Eddie repeats, and it’s as wonderfully liberating as it is _absolutely_ terrifying. “I think I’m probably gay.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, still sleep-muddled and confused. And then, “Yeah?”

Eddie nods, swallowing hard. “I’ve never told anyone,” he says. “I’ve never even told myself. Until right now. Literally. Two seconds ago.”

Richie’s eyes search his in the dark. It’s something like three in the morning. “Eddie,” he says softly. “Fuck. Yeah. I— Dude, I’m so happy. For you.”

Eddie grins so hard it hurts. “Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah. Thank you.” And then, because it feels important, “I love you.”

Richie’s face breaks out into a smile. “I love you too,” he says, as earnestly as if it’s the first time. “Eds, I mean— Thank you. For telling me. I’m so glad you told me.”

“Me too,” Eddie says, and his eyes feel hot and prickly. “I don’t know why it’s so fucking scary. I think maybe I’ve been gay the whole time.”

“I know what you mean,” Richie says, eyes bright in the dark. “I know. I’m so...I’m so fucking proud of you.”

Eddie nods, and rubs his eyes roughly. “I don’t know why it’s scarier than, like. I knew I was in love with a man. I don’t know why this is different.”

“Nobody ever tried to commit a hate crime over someone being Richie-sexual,” Richie says, and huffs a laugh. “I get it, Eds. It’s different. I’m proud of you.”

“I’m _gay,”_ Eddie says, and the truth of it rings through him. “Holy fuck.”

Richie laughs, and rolls over towards him, and kisses him off-center in the dark. And it feels so good, and so right, and so— It all feels so big. But so simple. And none of the scary things matter while Richie is kissing him. 

_Fuck,_ though. He has a lot of things to talk about with his therapist.

***

Richie feels like he’s returning home from Arizona a changed man.

It almost feels wrong, going back. He feels like he should be starting a new life here, or something. And the familiar slog of airport bullshit feels so strange when everything else feels so new and different. But he has a life to get back to, friends to face, a baby he is eagerly looking forward to being reunited with. So he drives them to the airport, drops off the rental car, gets on their flight. The same tired reversal of the steps they took to get here. Except now, Eddie is pressing the side of his foot against Richie’s. Now, Eddie holds Richie’s hand in his own when he squeezes hand sanitizer into his palm. Now, Eddie kisses the side of his head, just surreptitiously, when Richie leans it against his shoulder on the plane to feign sleep. 

Such little things, but they rock Richie’s entire world, every single time. God, what a miracle. 

The worst part of it all is the bit when they collect their things from baggage claim and Richie realizes with a start that they each drove here separately, what now feels like a million years ago. They each have a vehicle parked in the lot. They’re both going to have to get in them and drive them home, regardless of what they decide to do next. 

And, Richie realizes, he has no idea what they’ve decided to do next. 

“So,” Richie says, scrubbing the back of his neck next to the carousel. “Uh…”

Eddie hums, and doesn’t make eye contact with him, like he doesn’t want to be called on in class. 

“So I guess I should go home,” Richie says. “You know, like. To bring my stuff home, and...shower…”

“Mmmm,” Eddie says vaguely. 

“What’s your plan?” Richie presses. 

“Huh? Oh, I mean. Going home too, I guess. What else would I do?”

Richie shrugs, and hates the idea of not seeing him all day every day, even though that’s only become normal for the past three and a half days. “I don’t know. I mean—” He hesitates. “You could come to my place? Unless that’s, like. Needy, or you need some space, or. Whatever. Maybe you do. Never mind, forget I said anything.”

Eddie snorts softly, and Richie feels like a grade-A moron until he says, “Remember what I said about not needing a break from you?”

Richie’s face goes warm. “Yeah,” he says. “But that was like, before we… Like, before things changed. Or whatever.”

“You think that now we’re, what, dating? Or whatever the fuck. That now I’ll want to spend less time with you?”

Richie shrugs helplessly and thinks very hard about the thrill that went through him at the idea that they’re dating. It sounds so juvenile. He loves it. 

“Fuck off,” Eddie says, with feeling. And then, “But I really should go home. I need to water my ficus. And shower. And change.”

Richie chews on his lip. “You could shower and change at my place,” he hedges. 

Eddie grins a little, and Richie has the sudden, overwhelming urge to kiss him. It’s incredibly familiar. “But my ficus, Richie.”

“Right,” Richie says. “Right. The ficus.”

“You can come over later, though?” Eddie says. “Or, I mean. We can go out? Like, for dinner? Or I can cook? Or...dude, I don’t fucking know, help me out here.”

Richie laughs, and only just barely keeps himself from swooping in to kiss his gorgeous, frowning mouth. “Yeah. I mean, I think I was going to go to Stan’s later, to see Belly. But. After that?”

“I can come, too,” Eddie says. “If you want. Or, I mean, I don’t have to. But I probably should talk to Patty before she kills me.”

Richie can’t help but grin. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Go home, shower, meet at Stan’s at like...six? I’ll order pizza or something.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. “Yeah.”

It’s stilted, and weird, and Richie isn’t sure when it’s going to stop being stilted and weird. But it’s so wonderful that he doesn’t even care. 

They walk down to the parking garage together, find Eddie’s car first. Richie helps him, completely unnecessarily, to toss his bags in the back, and then they linger awkwardly next to the door. Richie wants Eddie to kiss him, but Eddie is looking very determinedly at an oil stain on the asphalt. If he would just look up at Richie, Richie thinks he could probably convince him to kiss him without making Richie wonder if he wants to be kissed.

Eddie doesn’t look. Richie kicks his foot, and Eddie cuts a glare at him, and Richie isn’t sure whether he should smile or look contrite. When has he ever looked contrite about pissing Eddie off? Fuck that. He goes with a smile. 

Eddie frowns at him. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Richie sighs. “A lot of things,” he says. “I don’t know. Are you gonna go, or what?”

“Yeah, but you’re just standing here,” Eddie says. 

“Fuck off,” Richie says automatically. He sniffs, looks around. There’s no one walking around the parking garage, but maybe Eddie’s not into, like, PDA. Maybe he’s never going to want to hold Richie’s hand in public. Maybe he’ll never want to be in the spotlight like that, dating a celebrity. 

Eddie huffs at him. “So?” he says. “Are you going to like...fucking kiss me goodbye or not?”

Richie jolts in surprise. He feels his face go hot, and when he opens his mouth what comes out is, “My my, Kaspbrak, someone’s forward.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, ears red, and turns to open his car door. “Never mind, fucking forget I said that.”

“No, wait!” Richie flings out his arm to slam the door shut again. “Fuck. Sorry. I’m nervous.”

Eddie gives him a weird look. “You’re _nervous?”_

And Richie can only shrug. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of things we haven’t, like. Talked about. I get in my head about them.”

Eddie’s eyes are searching. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “Me too.”

Richie manages a smile. “It’ll get easier, right?”

“God, I hope so,” Eddie says with a gusty sigh. 

“Yeah.” Richie bites his tongue. “But it’s worth the suffering in the meantime?”

Eddie licks his lips and nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. It’s worth it.”

A grin splits across Richie’s face, and he ducks in quickly to kiss him, fast and hard. Eddie makes a startled noise, and then grabs the collar of Richie’s shirt and drags him in closer and reciprocates so eagerly Richie feels him press up onto his toes. He can’t help the noise he makes when Eddie licks behind his teeth, right there in the fucking _parking garage._ It’s incredible.

They’re both breathing a little hard when they pull away. Richie can’t stop smiling. “Okay,” he says breathlessly. “Alright. See you soon.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, panting. He yanks Richie down into another kiss, and then physically removes himself from Richie’s grip. “Yeah. Bye.”

Richie feels like singing all the way back to his car. 

A couple hours later, he’s home and showered and fresh, and Stan has okayed him to come over to see Isabel, with the stipulation that he must also talk to Stan (ugh) and buy pizza (valid). 

He’s more excited than he might have thought to see the baby, considering all the other absolutely buckwild things happening in his life currently. Richie’s brain is now at least 75% thoughts about Eddie and kissing Eddie and Eddie saying he loves him, but shockingly, the portion of his brain recently dedicated to thinking about Isabel and if she’s okay and when he gets to see her next has not really diminished. He’s missed her, quite viscerally, these past few days. He misses her face and the way she smells and the weight of her in his arms. He knows babies aren’t that interesting and don’t have that much personality or anything so he’s not sure _how_ he can miss her as much as he does but he just...does. 

Plus, he has important news to fill her in on. 

He doesn’t bother knocking when he arrives, just pushes the door open as he kicks off his shoes and says, “I’d like a meeting with the baby of the house!”

Patty appears in the hallway entrance, positively _beaming._ “Richie!” she says, holding out her arms. “Honey. Darling. Are you allowed to tell me anything, or will Eddie bite your head off?”

Richie grins back, swooping in to hug her tightly. He doesn’t know a lot about what she and Eddie have talked about in the months leading up to this, but he’s made it clear that she was integral to the entire process, and so Richie loves her for that, even more than he already did. “Yes he will. I will field exactly one question before he gets here.”

Patty squeezes him around the waist and hums thoughtfully, and then just asks, shrewdly, “Was it good?”

Richie laughs against her hair. “Honey,” he says, “it was _magic.”_

Stan emerges from the nursery a minute later, holding Isabel on his hip and smiling softly. “Hey,” he says, looking Richie over like getting with Eddie might have changed him physically. “How was Arizona?”

“Fuck Arizona, Stanley, I took a trip to second base,” Richie says, already reaching for Isabel. 

Stan twists to keep her out of his grasp. “I am not rewarding that terrible joke,” he says. “Come back when you’re actually funny.”

Richie laughs, and tugs Stan closer by the front of his shirt so he can hug him, baby and all. “It was amazing,” he says. “A dream come true even before the whole, you know, lifelong wish fulfillment.”

“Good,” Stan says, and pats him on the back before pulling away. “I’m really, really happy for you.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, and laughs just because he’s brimming full with it. “Me too.” And then he reaches for Isabel again, and she holds out her arms to him, and he pulls her into his arms to kiss her all over her baby-soft cheeks, heart absolutely bursting. _“We did it, Belly,”_ he whispers, feeling her grabbing for his glasses. _“We really freaking did it.”_

“You make it sound like I need to arrest my daughter for collusion,” Stan says. 

“What are you, the cops?” Richie huffs and turns him and Isabel away from him. “Belly was very important to the wooing process, so shut up.”

“How was _she_ important?” 

Richie hums, and kisses Isabel’s forehead, and says, “Apparently I look sexy while holding a baby.” And then, quickly, “If either of you tell Eddie I said that, he will _murder me,_ and you’ll have to find a new godfather, so keep your mouths shut.”

Patty laughs, delighted. “Oh, I already knew,” she says. “We have _eyes,_ Richie.”

Richie whips around to stare at her. “Are you kidding me?”

Patty shrugs, smiling. “I’m just saying. He looked at you a _lot.”_

Richie groans, holding Isabel up in front of his face. “You’re all a bunch of bastards for not _telling me.”_

“He needed time,” Patty says gently. “And Stan never told me you had a thing, too. I thought you were just...like that.”

Richie sighs, and kisses Isabel’s cheeks some more. “I _am_ just _like that,”_ he says. “Could give a TED Talk on Silent Pining 101, you know? But, whatever. It’s fine now.”

Stan claps him on the shoulder. “Happy for you, man. And I'll need some of the details of how this all happened eventually, just so you know," he says. And then, “Also, if it’ll be a few minutes before the pizza gets here, I’m just saying—Bell’s diaper is looking pretty squishy.”

Richie makes a show of grimacing and sighing about being put to work as soon as he’s back from vacation, but he takes Isabel back to the nursery gladly, laying her down on the change table and handing her a teething ring to hold onto while he unbuttons her little romper. She spits out her soother after a second, but seems content to just stare up at him with big, quiet eyes, so he leaves it be, focuses on getting her changed before she decides she hates it again. 

“Good girl,” he says, lifting her chubby legs to slide a clean diaper under them. “Look at you, remember the first time I changed you? You screamed the whole time, and I almost cried on you. And look at us now, huh? Handling it like pros.” He gets her cleaned up, gently pulls the tabs snug over her belly. She makes a soft noise of protest as he takes a step away to throw out the wet diaper, and he hurries back to dip down and kiss her cheek, sucking gently so it makes a popping noise. When he pulls back, she’s smiling, and Richie grins right back. 

“Yeah, look at us,” he says, playing with her feet as she kicks them. “No problem, right Belly Baby? You like that?” He buzzes against her cheek, and she gurgles delightedly. He hasn’t snapped her romper back up yet, so just her arms are in her sleeves, and her legs and tummy are bare. The skin of her belly is smooth and round and soft, and Richie takes great pleasure in pressing his mouth to it and blowing a raspberry there, and immediately Isabel is erupting into giggles. Richie pulls back quickly just to see her, to see her perfect little face as she laughs, her bright eyes, the single curl of hair across her forehead. His heart breaks a little, in a good way. 

He does it again, and again, and Isabel keeps laughing like it’s the first time every time, patting her tiny palm against his cheek, until her tummy is chafing a little raw from it. But she’s giggling so hard, and Richie feels like he’s going to choke on his own happiness. He didn’t know he was allowed to be this happy, is all. He thought that was for other people. 

“Yeah,” he whispers to her, tickling the bottom of one foot to make her squirm and laugh. “I still got it.”

And who gives a fuck about his comedy career, honestly. He only exists to make this one single baby laugh. 

“Never laugh at Uncle Eddie, though,” Richie tells her conspiratorially, buttoning up her romper, kissing her spit-shiny chin. “He’s not funny at all, and I know you’ll have a good sense of humour, because Stan is the funniest bastard I know, and I’m going to raise you to have good taste in jokes.”

Isabel giggles softly, and looks up at him, and says, _“Da-da-da.”_

Richie’s heart jams up in his throat. He knows this means nothing—that this is just one of her favourite sounds—but it just. It just makes him so happy, to see her smiling up at him, watching him, babbling to him. Just, that she looks at him and feels safe, and happy. Richie swallows hard and thinks, _I make her feel like that. I make her feel safe. I make her happy._ And he thinks, _Hell yes I do, because I’m fucking...I’m fucking safe, and I’m responsible and I know how to change her diaper and make her comfortable and make her_ laugh _and people trust me to do that, and I do it. I do it. And I know how to love her._

There’s a sound at the door, and Richie glances back to see Stan there, standing in the doorway, watching him. Richie sniffs and wipes his eyes and says, “Hey, Stan, you ever think, like. You ever think maybe you’re deserving of the love you receive?”

Stan’s eyes are overwhelmingly fond. “Yeah,” he says. “Sometimes.”

Richie laughs shakily, and plays with Isabel’s tiny feet, and watches her earnest, happy face. “This is a new feeling for me.”

Stan moves to stand beside him, bumps their hips together. Rests a hand on Richie’s lower back. “You deserve everything.”

Richie can only shrug, and sniff again. “Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe. But this is the first time I’ve like… _felt_ like maybe I _do_ deserve good things. You know?” He glances at him quickly, and then away. “Do you think I’m good?”

“Yeah,” Stan says, no hesitation. “I do. Do you?”

Richie licks his lips, and lifts Isabel into his arms, and thinks about the time they’ve spent together, the things he’s done for her, and he didn’t do any of them to be _good,_ he just _did them,_ because he needed to, because he loved her, but. He did a good job. He convinced people that he could be good. And...he was. He convinced himself, too. “Yeah,” he says. “I think I am.”

There’s another sound at the door, and Richie turns to see Eddie there now, chewing on his lip, eyes bright. Richie doesn’t know what to say, so he just shoots him a smile. Stan pats his back, and strokes a finger over Isabel’s cheek, and then brushes past Eddie to leave them alone. 

“Hey,” Richie says, voice a little hoarse as Eddie steps in. “You made it.”

Eddie hums, and looks at him with eyes that Richie thinks can probably see every part of him. He moves closer, touches the bottom of Isabel’s foot, looks up through his lashes at Richie. “Hey,” he says softly. 

Richie swallows thickly. “Hey,” he parrots again. Eddie’s freshly showered and shaven, and he’s back in his normal clothes, back to the same old Eddie. But everything has still changed. “Feels weird to be back, doesn't it?”

Eddie makes a vague noise, looks down at Isabel again. “You missed her, huh?”

“An absurd amount,” Richie admits. She whines, and he shifts her in his arms, closer to Eddie. Eddie doesn’t back away anymore. “Did you?”

“Honestly? I kind of did.” He pokes his finger into her palm, lets her hold onto it. She’s making _dadada_ sounds again, and it makes Eddie grin, and that makes _Richie_ grin. “I know I’m not good with like...holding her or anything, still. But I like seeing her. And I like seeing you with her.”

“Yeah?” Richie says. “I was just telling her, you know, that she played an important role in all of this.”

Eddie laughs breathlessly. “I more meant that I like to see, like. How you are with her. The way that you...love her. I like that. I want to be more like that.”

Richie’s throat feels thick. He swallows hard. “Do you think I’m good?” he says before he can stop himself. 

Eddie smiles, like maybe he was expecting it. “Honestly, Rich? There’s no one better.” He ducks down, and kisses the crown of Isabel’s head, and Richie thinks that’s the first time he’s ever done that since she was born. 

“Fuck,” Richie whispers, half a hiccup, and then he’s pulling Eddie clumsily into a kiss of his own with one hand, slow and hard and indulgent. Eddie hums into it, and Richie feels his hand join Richie's in holding Belly up, making sure she’s okay, and then pressing up into another kiss, and another. And Richie knows they should go out and see their friends and talk to them, tell their story, but he can’t help but want this, here, for a little longer. With the two people he loves more than anything else in this world. God, he’s so fucking happy. 

He never, _never_ expected this outcome when Stan and Patty asked him to be their baby’s godfather. What a fucking gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND THAT’S A WRAP. thank you SO MUCH to everyone who joined me on this journey, it was an absolute joy. special thanks to sam who co-parented belly and provided endless ideas and support. i love u. and also thank u to my followers on twitter (hmu @darkrednights) for not getting sick of me AND to everyone who ever commented on this fic or is going to comment now, u really kept me going. AND LASTLY, a masterlist of the incredible art made for this fic!! i am SO BLESSED by all of these. if i somehow forgot any i’m so sorry!!!!
> 
> [this masterpiece](https://twitter.com/THED0GARTS/status/1268722723502637058) by sam of belly and co. on her first birthday  
> [this absolutely stunning commission](https://twitter.com/darkrednights/status/1267201572859269120) of richie and belly  
> [this lovely piece](https://twitter.com/princesDameron/status/1264749597462798339) of eddie at the grand canyon  
> [art #1](https://twitter.com/haruspecks/status/1262354731219005440) of eddie in his “hot mama” shirt and shorts  
> [art #2](https://twitter.com/thebrightmess/status/1261685726397292545) of the same, which, thank you so much  
> [the first art](https://twitter.com/THED0GARTS/status/1237494232191045634) sam (or anyone) ever did for this fic of richie and belly  
> [another gorgeous art](https://twitter.com/Evvobevvo/status/1249825049248501760) of richie and belly snoozin


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